Email marketing query

[Jo Friend]

Hi everyone,

I have a client who's considering a one-off B2C campaign email through a company with an active local website (around 50K unique visitors per month), and a database of people signed up to their newsletter of around 7K, who appear to be the right demographics & location for her services. She works in a very specific geographic area, and is just starting a campaign with a 25% discount across her website, google ads, social media, leaflets and local magazines. She thought an email campaign, in conjunction with her other local marketing, could be a good way of extending the campaign through an additional channel. Her own database of previous leads/customers is too small to be of much use (only a couple of hundred people).

I'm not that familiar with email marketing and wondered if this type of email service could be a good investment ? The email list isn't purchased, people sign up on the website to receive emails. However, the database will obviously be "cold" to my client's company. I believe the average email open rate for email campaigns the company runs for other clients is around 25%, and click through rate around 6%.

I'd really appreciate any advice from people with more expertise in this area

 

[WebshopMechanic]

Hi Jo,

I'll be honest, usually these things are a complete waste of time and money. List rental and newsletter sponsorship.

I've never heard of anyone who has got a return on this type of thing unless it's a heavy discount on the likes of Groupon. Maybe it works for brand-building but for business generation, it probably won't unless you have a high-priced product and only a few sales are required.

The 25% average open rate and click-thru rate are irrelvent because you don't know what subject lines or content they are using to get that. It could be a great subject line and then one great offer / story amongst 20 others that gets all the clicks.

Sorry if I sound a bit negative but this approach is just spray-and-pray.

Your friend would be better off being VERY targeted and growing organically.

Has she got any re-targeting or a marketing funnel set up for her ads?

People don't always buy immediately so her objective should be to build her list and convert those people with a series of emails to introduce, educate and warm them up.

She can also look at partnerships with other local businesses.

Hope that helps.

Matt

 

[Graham Tyers]

I wouldn't expect fireworks from a 7k mailing but if you can get it at the right price, why not.

Use it as a springboard to building an in-house list and it's definitely worthwhile doing. Mailing costs are negligible at that volume and there are loads of easy drag-drop newsletter creating tools.

 

[Andy Harris]

Depending on how much your client is going to have to pay for the mailing, this could work ...

1. Get the provider to agree to a smaller sendout (e.g. 1K people) for a smaller (test) price.
2. Assess what happens to the people who land on her website (they can be tracked beyond the click).
3. Based on those outcomes, decide whether to invest further.

If the provider isn't prepared to do a smaller mailout at lower cost, then that could imply they think it won't get results or it's not worth their time.

Another way to look at this is to get banner advertising on the site of 50K visitors/month.

 

[TripleHost]

A good alternative would be to run a sign up promotion and build up her own mailing list, there's a lot less cost involved however it would take quite a bit more time. However, the people that sign up to your clients own mailing list would be specifically interested in their products/services.

Signup for a Mailchimp account and give it a whirl, as one of the posts above has said if you use a banner ad on the website and place the mailing list Signup in a prominent position on your customers website it should prove fruitful.

The plus side to her own mailing list is, in the future the cost of sending out the emails is minimal as she's not having to pay someone else for the use of their time and list.

 

[Nochexman]

Depending upon how saleable your client's product is, they should consider offering a good incentive to get people to engage with or to buy from your client. Good luck!

 

[Caroline_Pegden]

Email marketing campaigns can be powerful, even though you shouldn't stop on the first email you send. Following what TripleHost said, use an email provider such as Mailchimp or SendGrid to be able to experiment with a small(ish) sample, around 1,000 people, analyse the opening rate vs bounce rates vs click rate.
Don't forget to follow-up by sending another couple of emails to those who have not opened your email, and a different one to those who have opened but not clicked.

The great thing about SendGrid for example is that you can automate that easily. You can also do some A/B testing to test the content of your emails / colours / subject etc... and what triggers a better responses, so that you can improve your email campaign over time.

I hope this helps.
Caroline

 

[Tihbtlrmvc]

Caroline's advice is good. One off blasts are of little value nowadays. You need a powerful attention grabber and then a very powerful reason to get in touch and after that a way to make sales.
You absolutely can't set up anything with prospects in a few days. Its a longer term project.
Quality of list(intent, e.g clicking an advert) is massively important. For most, a well planned PPC campaign to build the list over time with an occasional sale and then an ongoing drip email campaign to generate steady leads/sales is generally a better combination. Expect t spend 3 months testing and improving with a small budget and then ramp up.

 

[Scott2019]

I think Caroline is absolutely right. Of course it varies but studies have shown that an average customer needs to see an offer around 7 times before they'll commit to buying (think how often you research a product, check price, etc). An initial e-mail followed by a sequence of further e-mails would be of most benefit. Lots of cheap sites can do this Aweber, Getresponse, Sendgrid, etc. The e-mails should always contain more value that the customer expects - information on how the products will benefit them, products that can complement you're clients own products, real testimonials from other people, etc. It doesn't have to cost them anything, just to be of benefit to the customer. Ebooks are a super example and can be bought very cheaply on par sites (just make sure to check/improve the quality of the resource before you send it to anyone).

 

[Strent12]

To be honest with you she'd be better off building a blog and getting sign ups through content marketing especially if its something super niche.

Work on SEO, find where people who are interested in that area congregate and go there. It'll be a slow burn at first but highly valuable once off the ground.

 

[webgeek]

When you're emailing your existing client list, it's not uncommon for companies I've worked with/for to generate upwards of 20% to 25% of revenue via email.

When you're emailing a bought list who have never purchased from you before, it's not uncommon for companies to sell absolutely nothing into the channel.

Bought lists need warmed. The idea isn't to slam sales flyers in their face repeatedly. Instead it's to share valuable content so that they know, like and trust you. The idea is to develop a perception of you knowing more than them (and others), that you are willing to give value to them (rather than just be a taker) and that you understand their pains, and how to rid them.

All this should happen before you start throwing your buy now and save type flyers in the mix.

 

[EmailOut]

Hi Jo,

The EmailOut team will be more than happy to work with you and your client and we look forward to doing so.

EmailOut is based exclusively in the UK and our team of professionals have been handling client campaigns for over 20 years. With your determination and our expertise, we will work with you to not only meet your requirements but far exceed any expectations your client has when it comes to email marketing and what's more, we'll do it for free, forever. You can find more info about who we are and what we do here.

With regards to your specific requirements, firstly, we will clean up the newsletter subscribers by removing any problematic contacts ensuring a higher delivery rate than any other supplier can offer. Secondly, we will (if required), build your client a fully bespoke HTML template that's in line with best practice guidelines. This includes multi-format testing. Moreover, we will put you on our highest reputation IP pool and help you set-up the DNS settings properly to ensure (yet again) the highest delivery possible is achieved. Lastly, we will walk you through the statistics, and let you know how the campaign performed based on statistics of your specific sector.

Your client will be entitled to a dedicated account manager. Also, they'll be pleased to know that all support is included, this includes, but is not limited to, online training and support sessions. We will be with you and your client every step of the way.

And to sweeten the offer, our platform is fully-featured and all new features will be automatically added to your client's accounts without any sneaky upsells or restrictions.

Feel free to ping us a message if you have any questions.

We look forward to hearing from you.

 

[AllUpHere]

Hi Jo,

The EmailOut team will be more than happy to work with you and your client and we look forward to doing so.

EmailOut is based exclusively in the UK and our team of professionals have been handling client campaigns for over 20 years. With your determination and our expertise, we will work with you to not only meet your requirements but far exceed any expectations your client has when it comes to email marketing and what's more, we'll do it for free, forever. You can find more info about who we are and what we do here.

With regards to your specific requirements, firstly, we will clean up the newsletter subscribers by removing any problematic contacts ensuring a higher delivery rate than any other supplier can offer. Secondly, we will (if required), build your client a fully bespoke HTML template that's in line with best practice guidelines. This includes multi-format testing. Moreover, we will put you on our highest reputation IP pool and help you set-up the DNS settings properly to ensure (yet again) the highest delivery possible is achieved. Lastly, we will walk you through the statistics, and let you know how the campaign performed based on statistics of your specific sector.

Your client will be entitled to a dedicated account manager. Also, they'll be pleased to know that all support is included, this includes, but is not limited to, online training and support sessions. We will be with you and your client every step of the way.

And to sweeten the offer, our platform is fully-featured and all new features will be automatically added to your client's accounts without any sneaky upsells or restrictions.

Feel free to ping us a message if you have any questions.

We look forward to hearing from you.

You could at least pretend not to be desperate for work.

 

[EmailOut]

You could at least pretend not to be desperate for work.

And here we are, thinking we were being helpful. Hey-ho.

 

[AllUpHere]

And here we are, thinking we were being helpful. Hey-ho.

It just comes across as spam.

 

[Advisor1]

I use e-mail marketing for B2B and it works well

Never had a B2C success

 

[Ray272]

Certainly never pay much attention to those jazzed up emails with images you have to download manually.

Surely a more successful approach where B2B is concerned is to create an email which does not appear generic.

I'm seeing strong results with a new to me process of data collation. VPN point at target location and using local language enter keywords.

 

[webgeek]

It's good to know that EmailOut would put new clients on the high reputation IP pool, instead of the low reputation pool(s).

Who exactly gets put on the crap low reputation pools so they get bad inboxing rates and labeled as spammers?

-----------------

Having seen this sales method in the hosting business, where one big company offers 20x faster hosting (right along side their regular, presumably 20x slower hosting).... Who's the suckers getting the 20x slower hosting? Rhetorical question, but you see the point surely.

Telling someone you sell a great (acceptable) product right next to a bad (unacceptable) one, surely draws into question why you'd sell the bad. If you only have the good product, then all that smoke and mirror spin doctoring suddenly becomes unpalatable.