Take the Email Marketing Readiness Test today!
Is your business or organisation ready to make the most out of email marketing?
Very often we speak to business owners and managers who can’t seem to put their finger on this question. They know a bit about email marketing, generally agree on the fact the more frequent (but reasonable) contact with their prospects and customers will boost sales, and think that having an email newsletter is a great idea.
But why did they think email marketing would not work for them? We couldn’t figure it out at first.
We decided to get more information from our future clients with this email marketing readiness test.
Let’s go back to the three pillars of email marketing that we described earlier:
1) Customers
2) Content
3) Conversion
C is for Customer
I think at the start before we begin working with any business, we always consider if they have been in business for a while and whether they have been making an effort to compile a list of customers and prospects. If they do not already have a contact list, we will advise them to get started on that right away. For us, this C can also stand for clients or contacts, not just customers. All that matters is that you start building a list of qualified people who will listen and possibly buy from you again and again.
C is for Content
The next big thing that’s a road bump is the content bit. Many companies have all sorts of experts they work with plus they have genuinely great sales persons in their team. But when the time comes to put some of those ideas to paper, everyone generally feels that they have little or no usable content. Content can come from questions that have been asked by customers and answered by your sales team. Content can also come from upper management or the directors or founders of a company. It can also be simply rehashed from current brochures or a special report of an event that is about to happen or has already happened.
C is for Conversion
The mystery of conversion is perhaps the No. 1 Secret that everybody knows and nobody implements fully. The amazing thing about email marketing and the process of getting enabled to make it work for your business is that it forces you to think through every strategy and process to align it to email marketing. If you run an ad in the newspaper, you would be thinking: How can I grow my prospect database as a result of $1,000s spent in advertising? Then the next step would be, How can I convert more prospects from this advertisement to become a new customer and then into a long term repeat client?
That’s essentially the principle of getting conversion and knowing how to get even more conversions requires a strategy. You need a list, you need to know what your marketing objectives are, and as a result of engaging in certain actions, how many prospects convert to customers.
Email marketing makes tracking conversions easy. You put an ad out. You get a certain number of prospects who go a special site on your website (that’s called a landing page). Assuming 1000 people read the ad, 200 people visited that special website, 100 people signed up to learn more about your service and 10 people signed up, then your numbers are clear. Out of 1,000 people, you got a response rate of 20% (200 visits), 10% subscription rate, and a sales conversion rate of 1% (10 buyers).
1,000 readers > 200 visitors >100 subscriptions > 10 buyers
Another way to look at it is in response rates. Out of 200 people that visited the site, you got 50% subscription rate with a sales conversion rate of 5% (10 out of 200 people bought). The best part is that this is called instant sales conversions. If you followed up with the other 90 people who joined your list but did not buy now, you could be getting another 5% conversion next month and the month after that.
200 visitors >100 subscriptions > 10 buyers > 90 prospects may buy later
The more you know your numbers, and the more frequently you track your campaigns, you can derive some key statistics. If you know that your average sales conversion rates are about 5% for a print ad, then if you sell a $100 product, that that for every 200 people that respond to the ad, there will be 10 buyers making you $1,000. You will then have to evaluate if paying $1,000 for the ad will be worth your money and time, or should you consider another option that can get you a 5% conversion rate for $200.
That’s basically smart marketing. So know your customers, know your content and know your conversions. And by the way, as for the question: “Are you ready for email marketing?” Our answer: “You Better Be!”