Don’t be startled at the question. Most reasons why Email marketing doesn’t fetch anticipated results is because the question wasn’t asked and if asked, wasn’t accurately responded to.
Search for Email Marketing and you get a host of Email Marketing Tool Providers. They all offer a set of features that have almost become a category standard. Unlimited Subscribers, Bulk Email marketing, delivery to the Inbox, guaranteed leads, multiple templates, and so on. When compared, all the options deliver on these key evaluating parameters, but of course, at varying levels, which helps you to arrive at the decision.
This is indeed a good news. Businesses, big or small can evaluate multiple email marketing tools, thanks to the Free Trial periods. With the free trials, they are able to explore the match in terms of how user-friendly is the application, subscriber list sizes, number of emails that can be sent, scheduling possibilities and so on.
It is worth noting however, the amount of efforts that companies invest in planning around an Email Campaign Software, and so much little on the Right Email Campaign Strategy. To the extent that often an Email Marketing Tool is considered to be an Email Campaign Strategy. And that is where, companies start encountering troubles.
Why a strategy you ask? Because a Software ain’t enough!!!
Email Marketing is a legitimate part of Digital Marketing and thereby must be accorded its place in strategic planning. It is as sophisticated as an Ad Spend, just that, it is far less a spend.
Thereby, there is nothing callous about strategizing your Email Marketing Strategy.
At the outset and the most important step is to be clear as to what is the objective of going for Email Marketing. This Objective can vary from company to company and from time to time. This blog article intends to explore this aspect of Strategic Email Marketing in detail. Let us have a look at these objectives.
BUSINESS:
Most of the campaigns are undertaken with an objective of generating leads for the business. And if that is the objective for you, then the campaigns has to be in conjunction with this. Content, Design, Subscriber lists and email marketing tool, each must be aligned to deliver Lead Generation. Email Marketing can do the job of a Tele Caller by actually generating qualified leads.
Well, it is not just any leads, it has to be qualified leads!
Let’s see how! There were few Prospects in your Subscriber list who opened your email, then sat through the content, were intrigued or interested and then they clicked on a Landing Page link that in the body of the Email.
They again sat through the content in the Landing Page, got an understanding of your services and got further interested to see if your Product or Service can assist them. So they filled up the Interest form and shared their contact details with you.
Well! This qualifies then to be called a Qualified Lead.
Such leads when supported with the right Follow-up and Nurturing, yields a highly probable Conversion.
However, there can be dangerous pits here. The most commonly committed crime is being too loud with the promotion, making it all about the offer rather than the value assured. Too much of promotional content will lead you to be spammed, or even worst, blocking of the domain. Thereby, it is all about your Content Writer’s drafting skills.
EDUCATION::
In some cases, the end result targeted would be awareness building. Here the objective is to make the reader move to some content links for further reading and knowledge building.
This strategy works best when we are reaching out to a target audience whose need for a particular category is still in a latent phase. The target audience is yet to feel the need for that product category. The Right Campaign in such cases can sensitize the reader to a potential threat situation and prepone the need realization for the category.
For instance, in case of Financial Solutions, generally the audience would be ignorant of investment solutions that are actually designed for audience profile like theirs. So through appropriate campaigns, you are sensitizing the target audience to either a potential threat that they are exposed to without the financial cover; or to the potential advantage they shall reap if they get the financial cover.
Irrespective of the approach, here the objective is educate and enlighten the target audience regarding the presence of a Solution to a potential problem.
In such campaigns, informative Landing Pages, Blog articles and Infographics can be of great use.
RELATIONSHIP:
Yet another very important end objective sought through Email Campaign is communications with the existing customers to foster loyalty. Any Customer centric company will have a Customer Relationship Management plan in place, where at regular intervals, attempts are made to reach out to the customers
The question here is why bother?
The predominant reason being that “they are the customers” and for time immemorial they have been the king. Customer-centrism and Customer First policy is never a choice, it is a given. And it is important and right that we initiate being in constant touch with our customers. This will help in continual feedback related to product or services and the experience.
Another reason can be Cross-Selling of related products or services. Newsletters are an interesting approach to update your clients about new product developments, new features or new ancillary services alongside the product.
Thus it is paramount for a company that it first sets its ultimate objectives as well as goals with regards to an Email Marketing tool. Once the same is set, then a step-by-step by approach has to be used, especially when you are a first timer. However, it is not necessary that everyone operates with the same level of expertise. Though using a bulk email marketing software is not difficult at all, but at times companies may end up needing advice on drafting a spam-free email, coining the right subject lines, designing the right HTML templates and of course, subscriber lists filtering and sorting.
Though usually, the dominant players in the market have the best of bulk email senders, their assistance could be only to some extent. However, these days there are companies that offer consultancy services, alongside the email marketing software that will help a company to learn the art of email marketing. Obviously, after a few trials, anyone is good to be left on their own, and from there on, there is no looking back.
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