Email marketing..! Do you really taste the best piece of cake?
How many emails you get into your inbox everyday? How many of them you read everyday? Are those emails really relevant to you? These are some interesting questions you should ask yourself before doing an email campaign. Yes! even you plan the campaign, you must get into the other's shoes to see or think like others. How many emails you skip each day because they are not relevant to you? And have you ever thought of how many emails you get into your junk folder each day? I want you to answer these questions before further reading this.
Being an email marketing service provider is easy these days, you just need a good email list with about 500,000 emails in it and you just have to create multiple email marketing accounts in MailChimp or any other email marketing software provider, it's that easy. I recently got a call to my office line from a guy asking me if I am interested in buying an email list. Just because I am curious, I asked how many contacts in it and how much do I have to pay for it? According to him it has more than 500,000 contacts and he just need Rs.5,000 for it. Wow..! see it's that easy.
May be now you are thinking, wow..! that's a lot to expose your product or service, so why not. Of course it is a lot but how can these companies assure you that your advertisement is reaching that whole audience? Even they don't know how many people are actually reading their emails. Most of the emails end up in junk folders and a good portion will be bounced back because the email address is no longer in use and some will simply not pass the spam filters. Only 4% of the contacts will get this email into their inbox and lots of people simply ignore these emails because there is nothing relevant in those emails for them.
If the case is like this, why people still want to do this? That's how they used to do email campaigns. The service providers has blindfolded them and made them believe this is the real thing, but it isn't. If you don't believe me, ask them to send a detailed report of the campaign next time when you do a campaign with them, not just an excel file but real proof. So If it is not the real thing, you may ask what is real? You may say this is the next level of BTL advertising . Truth is email marketing is more personal than you think it is. A person's email is an identity for that person, it's personal. You can't go knocking on everyone's doors and get inside without permission right? So why you trying to get inside their emails without permission? Remember, these emails reach people with your company branding, it can damage the reputation of your company.
So how can you make it right? what is the correct way of doing email marketing? Keep these in mind before planing your next email campaign.
- You need to have an opt in (subscribed) customer database before thinking about email marketing
- You need to have a proper unsubscribe (opt out) process and all emails must have unsubscribe link in that email
- The subject line must me relevant to whats inside the email
- Senders contact details including the from address must be there in the email
- Proper call to actions must be in place
The most important from the above list is the opt in contacts list, you may think it's hard to develop an opt in list, but it's really easy if you know some marketing tactics. Ever wonder why companies organize competitions, price draws and events and so many other things to grab peoples attention? They often ask your name and the email address or even your business card right? And you may have noticed the check box before the submit button asking permission to send promotional emails to you. This is how you build up your own client base who really have an interest in your business. When you send an email campaign to this list, you know you get the return you expected. Be ethical and try to find your own way of building your own database of people who really interested in your product or service. Contact them regularly but not frequently, because keeping in contact makes the relationship close. Be innovative with your emails, don't just send the same email again and again. Keep few email templates for you and rotate those with new content. Give something new, encourage people to forward your email, integrate social media with your email. There are so many ways your business can benefit just by doing it the right way.
I appreciate Business Email Marketing Service Provider, your post is so interesting.
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