Your Email Marketing Plan for 2009
With all the talk about a global recession looming, we’re very optimistic to get even more businesses to start email marketing this year.
Why? The reason is simple. Those who are advertising in print media and broadcast media will be spending less there. With the marketing dollars saved, they must invest in some form of lead management and relationship building tool to keep their new and current customers up to date on what’s happening.
They need a tool that takes care of current and new customers, they need to find some cost savings in time, effort and man hours. It must be simple enough to be done in house with some external help. It must be able to yield a positive ROI and build up the brand of the company is well. Oh yeah, ideally it can cost less than a dollar per customer reached.
What better tool than email marketing?
In terms of cost and getting a Return on Investment, Email Marketing is the most cost friendly, effective, measurable and instant marketing mechanism to reach hundreds and thousands of contacts at once.
With the statistics such as open rates, link tracking, automated bounce and subscriber management numbers coming in, marketers can also be more mindful of how their email campaigns are being read and responded to.
So, what should be in your email marketing toolkit and master plan in 2009?
1. Get Started!
The best way to engage more prospects and customers through email is to simply get started. Start collecting email addresses, tell your clients you’re moving into email as a major form of communication and getting the best deals and updates to them. Start rallying your staff to let them know that every lead counts and to take real good care of customers. With email marketing, you can automate up to 80% of the communication and follow up, so there should be no slip ups in the initial data collection and intros by your team members to new prospects and clients. Start putting some good marketing dollars aside to do more with your email marketing.
2. Build Your List
Start building up your list of fresh leads, old leads, referred leads, prospective customers, new customers, old customers, repeat customers and VIP customers. Whether it’s one huge list or 15 sub lists, start building up your lists and filling them in with more leads every week (if not every business day)
3. Plan Your Communications Calendar and Holiday Greetings
It’s no excuse not knowing what’s coming up in 2009. For your convenience, we have published the Singapore Public Holidays, School Holidays and Major Festivals and Special Occasions for 2009. Decide which festivals are good for you to send greetings and how many days or weeks in advance to send those greetings. If you simply kept in touch with every contact in your database, I am sure we’ll be seeing more new business coming to you soon. If you’re dealing with parents and children, perhaps Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Children’s Day deserve some heartwarming notes. If you’re in retail, then Easter, National Day and Christmas might be sellout holidays. Be sure to sneak in a special offer while you’re at it.
4. Decide What Responses You Want From Your Contacts
It’s fine to send your contacts 3 emails a month if you know how you want them to react and respond to your emails. Perhaps 1 email should be information and educational, sharing an article of good knowledge and tips for your contact. The 2nd email should perhaps share some tips on how to make the best use of your product and service. The 3rd email can make a special offer or invite the contact down for an event. Decide if you want your prospects to click a link to indicate their response, or to lead them to an article from your website. Or perhaps they need to fill up a registration form for your event. The responses have to be tracked and measured to give you more information on what works better in your email campaign.
5. Give, Give, Give
Be generous with your customers. Always give them far more value than they pay for and then still give a bit more. When you feel that you’ve done the maximum giving, then be ready to start giving a bit to charity on behalf of your clients. Give them brochures, factsheets, vouchers and membership cards. Give your clients something to give to their family and friends. And when your clients refer you a fresh new lead, give thanks and let them know how much you appreciate their help. Make your clients beam when you donate a small part of your sales and profits to charity and make that donation in their honor. Give and soon, you will be given more blessings that you could manage.
6. Track Everything
Measure, track, evaluate and reformulate. Your marketing campaigns will always be changing if you track the responses and results from your email campaign and make small changes. You might be seeing more clickthroughs to articles of a certain topic or decide to change some colours. You might want to play around with the size of buttons in your emails and see which gets a better response rate. Test as much as you want, but when you get something that works, stick with it for a while and reap the most benefits out of it. If you have a refer a friend campaign that consistently pulls in a few new leads for you every week, then keep with it. You must be doing something right.
7. Have Fun
Email marketing does not have to be stale or lifeless. It can be personal, it can be fun, it can be a learning experience, or it can be a whole lot of buzz. Make your email SING and tease your customers once in a while. Make your clients WANT to receive your email and demand it when they missed an issue (or if you missed an issue). Ask your clients what they want to see and hear from your newsletters and give it to them.
8. Surprise: Expect the Unexpected!
While you can plan everything for your email marketing in 2009, prepare to be surprised. Some markets might move, prices will change, costs will rise and sales might fall. Be prepared to do more and plan a few Plan Bs just in case. If you find that you are short on money, then be prepared to go out on a limb and plan 1 more promotion to get the customers to respond. Don’t be surprised if a big client decides to downsize their budget and your involvement as well. Have a plan ready to cope with that and simply, be ready for some surprises. Take it in your stride and move on.
Well, here’s a simple way to get started for 2009 and to start refining your email marketing campaigns and communications.
Have a Happy 2009 ahead!
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