Email marketing promotion tips

Email Direct Marketing (EDM) is a marketing technique that companies use certain software technologies, the Internet as a carrier, and send emails to communicate with users and potential users to achieve corporate business strategies. It mainly refers to publishing company news, statements, new product information, discount information, etc. to customers through mailing lists.

Email is a common form of advertising and marketing in the Internet age. This method is to send specific emails about a website to a large number of customers or potential customers of the website. Compared with traditional mail, email is used very frequently. Most Internet users have their own mailboxes and use them frequently, which provides great opportunities for website promotion and marketing. Low cost is also an advantage that makes email more easily accepted among various promotional methods. In addition, email marketing is highly targeted, fast, and efficient. It can send specific advertisements to certain people, and its marketing promotion effect is easy to count.

Usually, companies can use EDM software to send EDM emails to target customers, establish communication channels with target customers, and directly convey relevant information to them to promote sales. EDM software has many uses, including sending electronic advertisements, product information, sales information, market research, marketing campaign information, etc.

The specific steps for using email for marketing promotion are as follows:

1. Build an email address database

To promote a website using email, you first need to collect a large number of email addresses and customer names. There are many ways to collect email addresses and customer names, such as purchasing a third-party marketing email database, or exchanging database information with others, but these are not the customers we need. The most ideal method is for customers to actively submit relevant information, such as prompting customers to subscribe when registering, and providing customers with preferential information after subscribing to emails.

2. Classification Database

In order for EDM to be most effective and not offensive to subscribers, it is necessary to provide targeted content so that users can see what they want to see. The simplest and most effective method is to provide classified subscriptions. When users subscribe or unsubscribe, a category directory is listed for users to choose from. In this way, user emails can be classified and different types of emails can be sent to users according to their actual needs. Avoid sending spam emails without distinguishing the types of users. Doing so will not only fail to achieve the desired effect, but may also have the exact opposite effect, and the emails you send will be identified as spam. Therefore, before sending an email, be sure to do a potential visitor analysis and then send it.

3. Avoid spam risks

For EDM, how to avoid becoming spam is a very critical issue. It can be said that all spam is marketing in nature, but emails with marketing nature are not necessarily spam. Generally speaking, emails based on user permission and with information valuable to users are legitimate EDMs. If one of these two factors is missing, it can be judged as spam.

The so-called permission-based email marketing means that a company obtains the user's permission in advance before sending information such as products, services, and promotions to target users via email. Therefore, the target users’ attitude is at least not averse to these marketing emails, which is the essential difference between permission-based emails and “spam”.

4. Control the email sending cycle

To be honest, not everyone really wants to unsubscribe from your emails. According to a study by Forrester Research, 71% of users unsubscribe because emails are sent too frequently; and 76% of users believe that the content of the emails is irrelevant. Therefore, in order to maintain those 71% of users, reducing the frequency of email sending is a wise choice.

The determining factor of the email sending cycle lies in the content of the email. Information with a short validity period should be sent first, while information with a long validity period can be postponed appropriately. Generally, the frequency of sending information should be controlled.

5. Email Content

Fundamentally speaking, email content determines the marketing value of EDM, and email content construction is a long-term and complex task. If the quality of email content is not high, users will choose to unsubscribe or will not read the email at all. This is obviously not the result that EDM wants. The content of emails should be valuable to users. This is a basic principle. In addition to avoiding a lack of email content, emails should also have a specific theme and direction, and there should be obvious systematicity between each email sent. In this way, users will have a deeper impression of the email and gradually improve user loyalty.

In addition to valuable content, there also needs to be reasonable format and layout selection. This is not just for the sake of looking beautiful. The design of the email content also directly affects the marketing effect. In addition, the email subject, email content, sender, recipient, etc. are all basic factors of EDM and cannot be omitted. This not only facilitates users, but also increases the promotion opportunities of their own brands.

6. Offer unsubscribe

Even if users join a mailing list themselves, over time, as their work environment and personal interests change, they may no longer be interested in the content of the mailings. In this case, users should be allowed to easily unsubscribe at any time, otherwise the mailings may become spam. Therefore, instructions for unsubscribing should be provided at the end of each email, and the unsubscribe procedure should be simplified so that users can completely unsubscribe by simply replying to the email or clicking a link in the email.

7. Marketing effectiveness evaluation

One of the characteristics of EDM is that its effect can be quantitatively evaluated. By detecting and analyzing some indicators, it can not only be used to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing activities, but also to discover problems in the marketing process so as to exercise certain control over the activities.

There are three main data indicators for measuring EDM marketing effectiveness: efficiency, reading rate, and click-through rate;

1) Efficiency

Calculation method: Efficiency = number of successful sends / total number of sends;

The total amount sent refers to: the number of EMail databases;

The number of successful deliveries refers to the number of email addresses that have successfully arrived, that is, the effective amount of the Mail database;

Significance: It is used to measure the effectiveness of obtaining the database, that is, the address sent is real;

Currently, many manufacturers selling EDM databases, although cheap and in large quantities, can hardly guarantee the effectiveness of the addresses. The EDM sent naturally cannot achieve the marketing effect.

2) Reading rate

Calculation method: Reading rate = number of opens / number of successful sends

Open volume refers to the number of times a user with a valid address opens an EDM after receiving it. Since an EDM may be opened multiple times by one user, some statistical systems will count the number of times an EDM is opened and the number of users who opened it.

Significance: Used to assess the user's interest in the email;

For accurate databases, you can increase the reading rate by adjusting the email title. For example, in my EDM marketing, the titles were "Call for happy accountants, win a five-day trip to Hong Kong Disneyland" and "18 hidden rules of happiness that accountants must read." The reading rate of the latter was significantly higher than the former by nearly 4%. It can be seen that EDMs that use prizes or free things as gimmicks may not necessarily improve results.

3) Click-through rate

Calculation method: Click-through rate = number of clicks / number of opens

Click volume refers to the number of clicks triggered after the user opens the EDM. If there are multiple links in the EDM, it is best to count them separately. This can help assess user interest in content and adjust and optimize EDM content;

Significance: Used to evaluate the user's interest in the email content; if the EDM email reading rate is high but the click-through rate is low, the EDM content needs to be adjusted.

Efficiency, reading rate, and click-through rate are the most basic measurement indicators in EDM marketing. For registration/purchase-oriented EDM, it is also necessary to monitor registration/purchase conversions. Generally, purchased EDM mass senders will have basic statistical functions such as the number of sends, the number of reaches, and the number of reads. By working with Google Analytics to track and analyze user behavior, you can achieve the goal of continuously improving the effectiveness of EDM marketing.

In short, EDM is a better marketing and promotion method. It is not only convenient, fast, and has a wide coverage, but also has extremely low cost. However, it must be used appropriately. In actual use, care should be taken to avoid some problems, such as spamming, unclear subjects, confusing email content formats, unclear recipients, and too high sending frequencies.

Author: William Long

Source: Long William