Covenant Designs' Guide To:
Wise E-mail Marketing
Leverage The Power of Your Brand for Increased Profit

Email marketing enables you to communicate with customers and prospects on a one-to-one basis and develop long-term relationships. Our full-service email marketing solutions enable you to deliver relevant communications to receptive customers and prospects — at a fraction of the cost of direct mail.

These are the most common questions our clients and prospects ask us about e-mail marketing. If your questions are not addressed from the list below, be sure to contact us and we will be happy to discuss this in more detail:

• What is your conversion goal for the email campaign?
• How can you get the recipients to open the email?
• What calls to action will the audience respond to?
• How do you focus your email message for conversion?
• What target page on your site will you drive the traffic to?
• How can you get the converted visitors to further self-qualify?
• How can you avoid spamming your own email list?
• What do you look for when renting a list?
• What type of results or ROI can you expect?
• Do you have enough email addresses to achieve your goal?
• How do you manage your own email database?
• Which words best describe your business?

What is your conversion goal for the email campaign?
We believe a successful email campaign does more than drive a lot of traffic to a site. A successful campaign is measured by conversion from a call to action. What are you offering: a white paper, free software trial download, other promotional offer, or a sales contact request? Similar to offline marketing, offer your audience something valuable so that they will be willing to give you something of value in return.

How can you get the recipients to open the email?
Subject is everything! State clearly and succinctly what you are offering and how it will benefit them? Throughout your campaign planning, put yourself in their position. What makes you want to open an email? What makes you want to click on the link? If you know your audience, then you know what they want. If you’re not sure how they will respond, test the list in small increments and measure the results. Adjust the message and possibly the target page to increase conversions.

What calls to ACTION will your target audience respond to?
Think about your audience and what they might respond/convert to. If you’re targeting a high-level audience (CEO, President), don’t offer them a free software trial download. Write in a style that speaks to them in the manner they are used to, as if you were speaking to them face to face. Try to keep the message short. If you feel you want to provide more detail, get to the point early within two sentences. Provide the link right after the two sentences. You can elaborate further after this point within the message or take them right to your site.

How do you FOCUS your email message for conversion?
Again, you want to think about the audience. If you have done some search engine optimization, you probably know your target keywords. Use the most effective keyword(s) in your subject. Repeat the keywords in your message body. Make sure the keywords are repeated on the landing page. A consistent and relative message is crucial. If your audience comes to your web site through search engines using certain keywords, they will probably respond to these keywords in an email message.

What target page on your site will you drive the traffic to?
It’s important to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to respond to the call to action. Provide a link to the "landing page" that gives them exactly what the email message said they could get. Don’t force them to navigate within your site to find the page for conversion (the page with the action to buy).

If you do not have a web page that gives them the email message they are expecting, potential customers are likely to simply click away. Remember, the internet is all about convenience. Call Covenant Designs at 214-700-0360 and have us build custom landing pages and add them to your web site.

How can you get the converted visitors to further self-qualify?
Ask a visitor to qualify themselves. For example, at the end of the request for literature form, ask them if they want more information. If so, ask them to complete a more detailed questionnaire. If you have a very successful campaign, this may help you prioritize the telemarketing or direct sales phone follow up. Measuring these actions can be an additional measure of success for the campaign. You will want to work with your webmaster to automate this process on your web site.

How can you avoid SPAMMING your own email list?
You may be collecting email addresses as visitors submit request forms or make purchases from your web site. Indicate clearly your Privacy Statement to ensure visitors that their email address will not be sold or distributed. Be selective about how often you send them email. Be careful not to spam the list by sending email too often. They will either opt-out or simply delete the message when they recognize the Sender name.

Don't waste their time and attention -- send emails only when you have something of high interest or value to offer. I prefer sending the message from a real person rather than a generic email address. This way, the recipient feels any response they send will actually be read by someone rather than ending up in a black hole. Be honest. Don’t use any bait and switch techniques or they will never open your email again and probably request to opt-out. Always give them the opportunity to opt-out with any email campaign. If they request to opt-out, be thorough about removing them from your distribution list.

What do you look for when renting an email list?
Portal web sites that provide valuable product or industry vertical information often offer email list rental opportunities to vendors. Shop around and compare CPM (Cost Per Thousand) prices. Ask about 'Selects' -- the ability to slice the list by selection criteria i.e. Job Title, Annual Budget for your type of product, Geography, and other demographics. Inquire as to whether there is an additional charge for sending the email.

Sometimes the list rental and the actual sending of the email blast are separate charges. Ask about content guidelines i.e. text limits, HTML and text message options. Many print magazines have web sites and offer email list rental. Some email list rental providers offer a CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Click) model. This means you only pay when the Recipient actually clicks on the link in the message to your site. It is in their best interest to help you craft a successful message for conversion and they typically offer this type of service.

What type of results or ROI can you expect?
Think about your goals: online purchase, request for literature, free trial software download, sales contact request, response to some other promotional offer. Whatever it is, you will want to implement mechanisms to measure it. Divide the number of click-throughs by the total number of email recipients to calculate your click-through rate (CTR). Divide the number of conversions by the number of clicks to calculate your clicks to conversion rate. You could divide the number of conversions by the number of recipients if you don’t even care about clicks. Of course, the percentage will be lower, but this may be your metric for success.

A rate of 3% to 8% of recipients to conversion is a successful campaign. However, using a new rented list could capture only 1% while your own in-house list developed from previous campaigns could reach 5%. You would also want to calculate the cost per conversion. If the conversion rate was low, but the cost was considerably lower than another campaign, it could still be considered successful. If conversion is your goal, then you want to make sure you have the mechanisms in place to measure conversion. This information is also useful if your campaign was not successful and you want to seek compensation from the list provider.

Do you have enough email addresses to achieve your goal?
Based on the conversion rates mentioned above, calculate whether you are sending your message to enough Recipients to achieve your campaign goals. If you don’t have enough email addresses in your own database, you may have to rent a list to supplement.

How do you manage your own email database?
It’s ideal to be able to maintain your email list in the same SFA or CRM tool used to manage your prospects and customers. How will the database be populated? Assuming that email addresses gathered from your web site are the result of a purchase or some other type of request form, how is the contact data fed into the database, SFA or CRM tool?

Whatever database you’re using you will want to think about the demographic fields you want to maintain in the beginning i.e. original campaign source for that contact, industry, product interest, geography. This way, you can easily do your own selections based on this criteria in the future. Think about how you will manage opt-in, opt-out, and undeliverable records. If you’re in the market for an SFA or CRM tool, the ability to manage email campaigns may be a product requirement to consider.

> learn more: contact Covenant Designs