10 Critical Tips for Email Success

Recently, our partner Salesforce.com worked with us to develop a set of email marketing quick tips for their AppExchange partners, many of whom are small companies with limited email marketing experience.  The tips are universal, so I thought I'd share them with you.

1. Build your own list.
By creating your own database, you can be confident that everyone on the list wants to hear from you. Don't rely on sharing lists from other vendors. Your best prospects are your current, happy customers and prospective customers who've opted in to hear from you. By relying on your own in-house list, you can identify and target repeat customers and your most loyal customers.

2. Deliver value.
Your customers are more receptive if you provide something of value in exchange for their time and opt-in permission. Include free trials, offers, product news or discounts on your solution. Try thought leadership approach with timely industry news, white papers, reports, surveys, market intelligence or research. Good content, especially content they can only get from you, still rules.

3. Research your target.
Find out more about your target customer base. Leverage Google to find blogs and social networks that speak to your customers. Leverage Web sites too. For example, if your target audience is CIOs, go to CIO.com to see what's top of mind.

4. Prospect by phone.
Prospects and customers are much more open to receiving a phone call followed up by an email invitation than an invite alone.

5. Customize your email.
Consider your prospects' limited attention. Invest in tools that allow you to target and personalize email. With targeted offers, your response rates increase dramatically. And, personalized doesn't just mean their name in the email - it also means personalized content and offers based on relevant needs, industry and job function of the prospect.

6. Use the subject line.
Put a customer benefit or business solution in the subject line of your email. Don't use exclamatory punctuation (!!!) or Free! in the subject line. Filtering software will block your mail. Remember that the value proposition to the prospect for their time is the most effective subject line.

7. Perfect your timing. 
If you send too many messages, you risk irritating prospective customers that might drive them to unsubscribe. If you send too few, they forget you exist. The frequency of your messages should be no more than every two weeks, more appropriate is once per month.  Better yet, let your prospects tell you how often they'd like to hear from you and then never, ever violate that permission.  Marketing automation, like that from Eloqua, will help you manage your multi-touch programs.

8. Test your email.
Before launching large-scale email volume, always test on smaller groups for optimization.  Also consider sending to smaller groups to avoid spam filters that pick up on large volumes - especially if the data includes significant bounce backs due to poor data or poor list quality.

9. Never buy lists.  Never, ever buy lists. 
Purchased lists will almost certainly get you blacklisted by the major spam filters.  Purchased lists cause the most problems for you and your email service provider may ban you.

10. One-time and you're out.
When you do email your prospective customers (let's say it's a trade show lead) make sure to include an opt-in invitation and reward. If the customer declines to opt in or unsubscribes, never send to that name again.

Remember: the right creative with the right offer will always prevail. The secret to effective email marketing is to put in the research time and effort before you hit the "send" button.

Comments

[Nisha]

Useful tips! I think providing value in the body and subject line is very improtant given the current economic climate. Do you know of any email software that manages peoples preferences- so you can separate out those, for example who want to be emailed once a month vs. once a week.

Thanks

[John Gillett]

Thanks for the great tips.

One note that I'd add to the subject line tip:

Personalize the subject limne whenever possible. In some cases this may be as simple as including the name of the company that you are sending the email to.

[Jeff Ogden]

Good email tips. Wish to forward interally as we are in the process of creating a marketing database and building/launching an email campaign. But I cannot find a way to forward it.

Good seeing you at OMS.