Marketing Ideas!

By now, you should know my stance on buying email lists: don’t do it. Once my client understands why this tenent is such an important foundation to a healthy email marketing practice, they are typically very ready to start building their own in-house list. But there are potential pitfalls to avoid down this path as well. Here are 5 things you should think about before you start to build your email list that will help you avoid these obstacles and build a healthy in-house list:

1. Who should be on your list?
Step one of any list-building exercise should be focused directly on who you want to add to your list. If you are building a list of prospects–people you hope to later sell your products or services–think about who you need to talk to: what’s the persons role, title, industry, need, issue, budget, etc. If you’re a non-profit, think about why you need to add people to your list. Ask such questions as what you will need these new contacts to do on your behalf later (e.g., volunteer, donate, activism, etc.). The better you can qualify the people you want to add to your list before they end up on your list, the more productive your list will be.

2. What are you going to say?
The rule of thumb for basic database marketing is that success is roughly based 40% on your list, 40% on your content, and 20% on creative elements. So, after taking care of the first 40% (who will be on your list), consider what are appropriate messages for that audience. This will effectively cover almost 80% of your overall success criteria. Here are some questions to consider: Are you trying to educate them about the nature of your offerings, are you trying to network and begin other conversations, or are you sharing other information with them? Will you need to send them a series of emails to effectively provide all the information they need, or will the message be contained in one-time emails that will be delivered on a regular schedule?

3. How can you further qualify your contacts?
With the message (i.e., item #2 above) in mind, you can begin constructing a series of emails designed to help them through the entire process, perhaps qualifiying your list at each pass. For example, you could start out by asking for only a little bit of information (such as just their name and email address) in order to send them a white paper. Then, with your follow up email, offer them a podcast, in exchange for a little more info (such as their company name and their title). Finally, you might invite them to a webinar, and here you might ask for a phone number. Knowing what your entire message system might look like will not only help you bring your audience through your processes nicely, it will also help you understand what if needed on your end to make it happen.

4. How soon (and how often) will you send an email?
Once someone joins your list, when will you send the first email? When will you send follow up emails? In virtually all cases, there should be some sort of “welcome” email … something that will help confirm that they did indeed submit their email address to some system, perhaps shows them the ropes of your organization, sets some level of expectations on the nature and frequency of emails you will be sending, etc.

5. How will you measure success?
This should really be one of your first steps, because by knowing how you will be measuring your own success, you can better build systems that fit your needs and help you achieve your goals.

Frequently people ask me how to help them with their open rates. While there are some obvious areas to address (such as the From and Subject lines of the email), there is another area that most organizations need to address, but would prefer not to: their list.

Your success in email marketing can be articulated as such: 40% is based on your list, 40% is based on your content, and 20% is based on your creative (design, etc.). If you really want to get better open rates (and even more importantly improve your conversion rates), you’ll want to spend some time growing a high-quality email list.

There are 5 specific things you should consider while building your list:

1. Fresh contacts
Statistics suggest that most lists will see about 30% of their email addresses evaporate. People will opt-out, the address is no longer valid, etc. Make sure you have a good source of contacts to replace those that disappear.

2. Organically grown
Buying lists are technically illegal. Renting lists is a bit of grey area, and don’t tend to produce great results. If you want a really great email marketing list, then grow it organically: get people to opt-in to your message because they care about what you have to offer. Use SEM, social media marketing, etc. to point people to your web site where they can opt-in.

3. Targeted audience for targeted messages
Before you send an email to your list, ask yourself “who on the list should NOT receive this email?” In virtually all cases, you should be able to think of at least a few contacts that should not receive it. So don’t.

4. Only ask for the information you absolutely need
Segmentation is one of the most overlooked aspects of email marketing. You create segments by creating audience groups based on similar data (e.g., geographic information). But be judicious in what you ask for. If you don’t need the information for segmenting purposes, don’t ask for it.

5. Constant nurturing, pruning
Your email list is a lot like a garden. Give it the proper attention and nutrition, and it will reward you. Ignore it, and it will soon be overgrown with weeds and will no longer be useful. The attention and nutrition is the content you feed it. Send out good information, and your list will reward you. Also, do a re-engagement campaign every six months or so to get rid of the “weeds” or contacts that may have gone stale (or never should have signed up for your list in the first place).

This post is in response to an article from MediaPost News. I tried to post a comment there, but their registration process requires at least three steps and responses to about 20 questions. A little too much work for me to make a comment, so I am writing my rebuttal here.

The underlining message of the above referenced article is that direct mail is becoming too expensive and undesirable, so people are turning to email to do their direct marketing. The implication is that email marketing can easily be used as a direct marketing tool. This is, in fact, not completely true.

One of the biggest hurdles for virtually any marketing or sales effort is to have an audience big enough to market or sell to. Frequently the easiest and quickest solution is to buy a list. And this simple act is where we separate email marketing from traditional direct mail.

Yes, email marketing can be — and frequently is — used as a direct marketing substitute, but this is not the best way to use email marketing. In fact, there are specific rules against using it in this way. As previously stated, most direct marketing campaigns start with purchasing a list. While this is an allowable (and arguably ethical) practice with traditional direct marketing, no credible email marketing solution provider allows their customers to upload purchased lists.

In fact, the CAN-SPAM regulations forbid it. So unless you want to possibly incur a fine of up to $11,000 per incident, purchasing a list for the purposes of email marketing is not the best course of action.

This is not just about SPAM, per se. Email — especially as a direct mail campaign to someone who doesn’t know you — has a critical flaw: viruses. The standard operating proceedure is to not open email from people you do not know. Why? Because this is one of the ways computer viruses spread. So this isn’t just about the ethics of sending unwanted email, this is about serious computer security.

Here’s how we advise our clients. If you need to buy a list, great. We have relationships with several firms that do a great job with buying and selling lists, and we can help you do this. But you need to use the list for a direct mail campaign — not on email, but with traditional direct mail. Use this campaign to get people online, and convert them into an email address. Now, because the person has opted-in to your list, you can use email marketing to help build the relationship, and walk them through the sales process.

So, you see, there is — and there must be — room for both traditional direct marketing techniques and email marketing campaigns. Email marketing works best when it is integrated into other marketing channels. In fact, all of your marketing efforts will work better if used in conjunction with each other. Just like tools in a toolbox, consider the strenghts and benefits of each marketing tool and use the right tool for the job at hand.

Many small business owners make decisions based on one question: can I afford to do this?

Despite a very low price tag in general, email marketing is no different. Most small businesses are unaware of the specifics of email marketing, and a proliferation of email marketing service providers complicates the decision making process.

Ultimately, it’s easier to compare what you know and what you can measure: the price. But this process is inherently flawed, as shopping for the lowest price rarely delivers the best value.

So how does a small business choose the right email marketing service provider? To begin to answer this question, it’s important to look at three key aspects that help differentiate most email marketing services. While any service will likely deliver a good ROI (email marketing is so inexpensive that it’s hard not to receive some ROI from your efforts), by evaluating your short list of email marketing service providers on these three areas, you’ll be better able to determine the right service provider for your company.

How to Evaluate Email Marketing Service Providers

For the sake of full disclosure, this blog is written by the owner of Aperio Marketing, an email marketing service provider. I hope you will check us out, yet I also know we are not the right solution for everyone. So I hope you can use this information to form an objective opinion of your options and find the right fit and the right solution for your needs.

These are three important features you need to look at:

• Tracking capabilities (e.g., can you identify how someone found you?)
• Don’t look at the price so much as the pricing model.
• Make sure their customer service fits your needs

Tracking capabilities

You frequently hear how important it is to send targeted messages. What’s not frequently discussed is how to do this. That’s a topic too big for this post, but we can start that conversation now.

A great place to start is by knowing who’s on your list.  While it may be hard to discover their likes and dislikes, or other demographic information, it should be fairly easy to track where the contact found you. This one fact could tell you a lot about your contacts’ likes, and preferences, among other things.

In face-to-face networking events, meetings, or other interpersonal scenarios, this is fairly easy. When you meet someone and receive their business card (and permission to contact them), you can create a group or list just for the event, then put the contacts into that group. Now you can send them messages that revolve around that common experience, a technique that can be very powerful.

It’s a little different for those who find you online. To solve this problem, search for an email marketing service provider that provides unlimited signup screens (for free — some charge for additional signup screens). You can use signup screens to tie-in with specific lists or groups on the back end, thus giving you good data on which pages are converting the most traffics into contacts. This strategy becomes really powerful if you are able to trigger auto-responders based on the signup screen used.

Pricing Structure

I’ll admit this one falls into a subjective category, but it’s a topic on which I have strong feelings. There are three main pricing models for email marketing service providers: database size, pay-as-you-go, and volume of emails sent. For the most part, the difference in price is nominal. If you are simply pinching pennies, then there may be no other solution than the lowest possible price. But, again, if you’re looking for the right fit for your organization, then you should strongly consider what your firm believes in and how your vendor’s pricing model matches up.

Database size

For many, this is the most economical choice, because you can send as many emails as you want without incurring additional fees. Your cost is based only on the size of your database. From my perspective, this is the worst model for small business and here’s why:

• Small businesses needs to be able to grow their list of contacts without penalty. This model unfairly penalizes list owners for growing a database, even if it isn’t used for email marketing. I think this is backwards of how it should work. Especially in a small business environment where resources are scarce, you should be able to grow your list of contacts as large as you need it to be without penalty. Storing emails and not using them has little intrinsic value.

• The model is inherently unethical. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this model is unethical. Under this model, you can send as many emails as you want, whenever you want. Thus the sender is in a position to essentially spam contacts in the database at no penalty. The small business owner may suffer because of the ill-will that may be generated, but the real victims in this scenario are the recipients. Let’s face it: email marketing doesn’t have a good reputation, and it’s pricing models like this that contribute to this perception.

Pay-as-you-go

A slightly better option is the pay-as-you-go model, which is a little like a cell phone plan. You buy a certain amount of email credits that you can send, and you keep the volume of emails within that set amount. This option is better than the database size model in that the small business owner is not penalized for growing the list size, and there are some controls in place for not sending an unlimited amount of emails.

The biggest problem with this model is again an ethical one. Many of these plans “expire” the email credits bought. When the expiration date is coming up, you have to “use ‘em or lose ‘em,” which can encourage sending unwanted emails.

Volume of emails sent

Perhaps the best model of the three is a volume-based model. Under this model, you are not penalized for growing your list and you only pay when you send emails. In other words, you are only paying when there’s opportunity for ROI, which is a good, and fair, practice (and similar to the pay-as-you-go model).

The biggest upside here is that there are no expiring email credits, and in some plans, if you don’t send any emails, you don’t have to pay anything. So if you only send out a quarterly email newsletter, you are only invoiced four times a year.

Customer service

Perhaps the area that should be scrutinized the most is customer service. Many of the service providers that a small business will consider are based on a “self-service” model, meaning the small business is responsible for all aspects of creating, sending, and measuring campaigns. Because of this, and the lack of experience many small business have with email marketing, the “batch and blast” emails typify the approach most organizations use.

But if you really wanted to incorporate email marketing into your marketing plan as a substantial tool, to build relationships, and boost revenue, you will want to learn how to use the tools properly. During your evaluation period, find out what sort of education programs and staffing the service providers offer to help you through the learning curve.

The last, and most important area to consider is your relationship with the vendor. Because of these low price points, most email service providers are looking to gain customers on a national or global stage. In stark contrast, many small businesses are local and use local resources. Local businesses understand the value of using other local services. Local businesses can usually support your quicker, better, and more efficiently than a global company can, plus you are supporting your local economy, which is no small thing. So consider a local email marketing service provider as one of your vendors. If you are using a local company, they may have local training capabilties, and may even be able to come to your location to educate you on their system.