Email Marketing

balletgems said:

I am setting up an online boutique selling gifts, jewellery etc. My e commerce package does not include email marketing. So I have found some companies that will do that for me - but its quite costly. Your thoughts please on whether this is a worthwhile cost for a new and small business?

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First concentrate on writing the email.

MailChimp seems to do the job - and it is free if you have less than 2000 email addresses and less than 12,000 emails per month.

It also helps by generating reports of how your precious emails got treated on arrival.

Jackie

Another good option is Campaign Monitor, they have an "email builder" making it easy to put together a simple design and send it to your contacts.

It's better to buy list of people you feel will buy your product, say 10,000 records at least. Then use an email marketing provider like Adestra or DotMailer to send a campaign out yourself. It's pretty easy to send a campaign and gather results, the tough part is having a good enough email to drive traffic and sales. If you haven't got in house designers, most companies offer a design service that is probably worth investing in. Some provide fully managed services which are also worth looking into if you have a reasonable marketing budget.

Make sure you personalise your emails with the prospects name & use any information you have on their preferences to tailor the message as much as possible.

Email marketing can definitely be worth it for any sales based business.

DotMailer is the best platform to use if you want to spend less than £250 a month.

Google for "B2C email data providers" or "consumer email lists", you can often choose categories of people that have opted into certain interest lists thus suggesting a higher chance of purchasing products that fall into those categories.

With that data you can use clever personalisation methods built into most platforms that can change the products being displayed in the email according to what interests they have. The more personal the better you see.

I'd say you want to consider spending at least £2,500 on data if you are serious.

You can buy 1.5 million records for £199 but a) your isp or emarketing provider will ban you due to the savage amount of bounce backs you will get (think 70%) and b) there isn't a chance in hell of most of the remainder being legit optin emails.

Some services offer blasting services, 500000 emails for just $300!!! Don't bother with that either, they email that same massive database every 30 mins. These days you can buy software that literally guesses consumer email addresses so it's really not worth trying to do it on the cheap.

PPC is a better thing to invest in for an online boutique, more visibility, clearer & faster results.

I wouldn't have thought buying lists of peoples emails to send campaigns to is the best (or legit?) option?

Emails are governed by three main pieces of UK law :-

Data Protection Act 1998
Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (this also covers SMS Spam).
Companies Act 2006
Under the first two pieces of legislation, consumers must have opted-in to receive emails from you before you are able to send marketing emails to them.



Read more: http://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/2011/01/uk-email-marketing-law/#ixzz1cCvyyvOY

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Response rate on bought lists is even worse than direct mail campaigns. Unless you have built the list, or it is from a known responsive source, don't buy one.
Spend the money on PPC or SEM.

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Its my opinion about Email Marketing that it is not effective way to promote your website or product.

MaxDaniel said:

Its my opinion about Email Marketing that it is not effective way to promote your website or product.

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What a bizzare post.

Email marketing can be a great way to promote a product or service but only if you understand it and use it in the right way. It isn't the free marketing platform that many entering into it think it will be.

To me it comes down to 3 elements.

Knowledge - You need to understand your target market fully, be able to segemnet your market, understand their buying behaviour and why your different segments would buy from you and what they will get out of buying from you.

Data - Once you understand your market and the different segments in it only source data that meets exactly the people you want to target. Building your own database will always get the best results. Ensure you understand the law as said in a post above.

Message - What is the purpose of the message, customer newsletter, customer retention, new business aquisition etc. Each of these will require a different message. All your communication should be about your customer or prospect not about you. Always think about why would they read it, what will they get out of it. And keep it simple.

Many of the people who say email marketing doesn't work haven't done it properly. If you understand it and do it proerly you can get great results and it doesn't need to cost a lot of money at all though it does take time and effort.

Hi there

To be honest with you I would definately try not to pay for email marketing campaigns, as long as peronally, using free online platforms, can do it myself.

I am not really sure what are you up to, but first of all try using platforms as IContatct, MailChimp, Benchmark aso, and if not satisfied with the results or the varriety of options you have there, you may consider paying for such an email campaign.

I am currently using MailChimp, used to use IContact and Benchmark. As I am still testing as many platforms as I can, my opinion is that IContact is by far the most useful one.

Hope this helps

playboy_bunnie said:

I wouldn't have thought buying lists of peoples emails to send campaigns to is the best (or legit?) option?

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Yes and No!! Many consumer data suppliers have invested time and effort in building a pool of fully opted-in individuals that have specifically given their permission to receive marketing information by email on third party offers. These lists are then made available on a 'rental' basis with the broadcast being undertaken by the consumer data supplier on their chosen broadcast platform. In short the email addresses are not released to the end-user! In this way consumer data suppliers remain fully compliant since every record holds the date and time stamp and URL where the individual opted-in and any creative sent out carries an unsubscribe message and a declaration of why they are receiving the email, who from and where they would have opted-in.

The benefit of using a professional consumer data supplier is that, as Phil at Shortlist has pointed out, the data can often be segmented further using a wide range of overlays so the the recipients are more likely to be receptive to your product or service maximising the chance for success.

As per your comment, and that of others in this thread, I would be very wary of anybody that is willing to release email addresses en masse for peanuts money!!! The bounce rate will be high and the provenance of the emails questionable and you could land yourself in a wholeheap of trouble under current legislation if you cannot provide valid opt-in details in the event of a data access request. I would recommend dealing only with suppliers that are DMA members as they are bound by the DMA code of practice.

As a channel email can and does work, however, email isn't a strategy in its own right! It should form part of an overall multichannel marketing strategy. With current average open rates of c.1-5% and click throughs of anything from 0.5% updwards you are going to have to work hard to get your message opened which means making sure that there is a strong call to action, an attractive offer, meaningful engagement and a clear and navigable landing page or website at the other end. Although it is certainly important, quality data is just one element of a successful campaign.

I would suggest talking to two or three email providers, listen to their advice and work this into a viable strategy and how likely open/conversion rates fit with your expectation. Once you are satisfied then trial, test and analyse. Start off small scale and minimise your exposure and tweak future campaigns to find a winning formula.

All the best
Adam

Hi there,

For a business like yours email marketing is best for keeping in touch with customers who have already visited your site or bought from you. It's a bad idea to buy in a mailing list.

It's a slow process, but building a mailing list from scratch through your site will bring much better results - and the sooner you start doing it the better. Mailchimp is a very good starter option. Add a sign up box to your website and start sending regular emails to those who sign up.

Your newsletters can have the latest news, offers, fashion/gift advice - anything interesting which gives value to your customers and makes them think of you.

Alison

Hi there.

You could try Comm 100 they offer various customer communication tools that are all free.

Well if you buy the the right data and run some creative campaigns, perhaps generate a newsletter and sell through that etc, you can produce extremely low cost sales very reliably.

Most people do one big email blast to whatever they can afford and dump it straight away if it doesn't profit. Sometimes, it can take 3-4 months of tweaking to really start seeing results.

It really could be good for your business if you have a reasonable enough budget.

playboy_bunnie said:

Another good option is Campaign Monitor, they have an "email builder" making it easy to put together a simple design and send it to your contacts.

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I have used this before - it is quite affordable and easy to use. They also send regular emails notifying customers of functionality upgrades. I would recommend them.

buying a list has always worked well for me.. and as long as you send a good.. to the point email and word it right, you should get a nice return.

Being a new and small business, I feel email marketing won't help in promoting your website. I won't recommend this option.

Email marketing takes time to get a good return. You really need to give it a go for at least 3 months to make an informed decision about how effective it is for you.

The principles of any successful marketing are always; market the right product to the right people with the right message. Put some thought into how to apply these principles to your scenario and your marketing will work.

We see thousands of email marketing campaigns going through our servers each week and the really successful ones are always the ones that have taken the time to plan a consistent campaign rather than just hurl 2 millions emails blindly and hope for the best.