What is involved in setting up a successful email marketing program?

How well does your company do email marketing? Are your subscribers opening and viewing your content? Your EDMs being overlooked?

Electronic direct mail (EDM) is a very effective way to communicate with existing and potential customers, as well as internal staff and stakeholders. By emailing informative material in a creative way promotes brand awareness, customer engagement and loyalty, while also educating them on your product and services. This can include: newsletters, company announcements, product updates, special offers, educational tools and much more.

Before you start, you need to focus on developing a communication strategy specifically customised to your business’s needs. The next step is to set up a direct mail software which can be used to send regular EDMs to your database. Then you will need to produce ongoing high impact and engaging communications and content.

1. Strategy

Assess your business requirements and develop a custom strategy to target your existing and potential clients. Every business is unique, and it’s important to review your communication needs carefully. Do you have ongoing existing customers who make regular purchases? Do you have a dealer or reseller network who could benefit from regular communication?

Look at the channels you have which would benefit from your news and updates, and most of all the best source of return investment.

2. Direct mail software set up

There are multiple benefits to setting up and using electronic direct mail software such as; the option to design premium emails which clearly and concisely communicate any number of announcements, showing your database you are dedicated to the most professional approach, reporting and tracking how your database is interacting with the content and more.

Do you have email software set up, or is it old and outdated? Or you don’t have software set up to send out EDMs at all? Or you just don’t have the internal resources to dedicate to managing your businesses communication needs?

Don’t worry, Cocktail Marketing can set up and manage your emails using the latest and best EDM software available. Our email marketing specialists will take your existing database and segment it to effectively target specific audiences, for the best possible results.

3. Custom and template designs

When you use direct mail software it takes more than simply setting it up and sending it. You need to make sure the template is designed to match your branding, as well in the most user-friendly way.

The last thing you want when you open an EDM is to be bombarded with a messy and overwhelming design. This just confuses people and will give them a reason to hit the unsubscribe button.

Therefore it is essential to build custom designs and code unique templates to make your EDM’s stand out, easy to read and simple to interact with.

4. Content development

The key to a successful EDM execution is consistent content development. Once an email gets sent out, you need to begin planning the content for the next send out. Refining and developing it to ensure the imagery and messaging has the highest possible chance of engagement.

Ask these important questions: Is this content relevant to this target audience? Is it worth sending this content to all market segments? Is there anything you can add which will be beneficial to the success of the campaign?

One major reason communication programs fail is due to marketing teams being too busy to think of ongoing content for regular emails. It is all too easy for this practice to fall to the back of your to-do list, setting the strategy up for failure before it even gets a chance to begin.

If this is the case, Cocktail Marketing can develop and coordinate your content for you, including sourcing imagery and writing copy.

5. Send out and reporting

Let’s say you have your software set up, your database implemented and templates designed. You then populate your content and are ready to go. The next step is the easiest part, just on click and everyone gets your email straight into their inbox. There is even the option to personalise it one step further by auto populating their names within the body text of the email.

But the main stand out feature of using direct mail software is the ability to track who is opening your EDMs, who is interacting with it and who is unsubscribing. Using the right software you can get very detailed information which can help you understand the behaviour and interests of your audience.

Done right, implementing a solid EDM strategy can be widely successful, however if incorrect it can have major ramifications on your brand’s reputation. If you are interested in launching this program but want to do it the right way, just say when and we’ll manage the set up, design, and send out for you. As well as produce a detailed report after each campaign so you can see exactly who has been interacting with your content and those who haven’t.

Important things to consider when sending out EDMs

What is the best email address to use when sending an EDM?
One thing some people don’t take into consideration when setting up and sending out EDMs is how important the ‘From’ email address is. It is the single major factor which will determine if your email will end up in the inbox or the spam folder.

Best practice is to use a generic address using your company’s domain name, example being: [email protected]. Using free email address domains such as @yahoo.com or @gmail.com will be treated as high risk for being spam.

Many people think emails sent from a well known person in your company is the best way to guarantee engagement, in this case you need to seriously consider the following; Who will be monitoring this inbox for potential replies? Will this person be happy to receive these replies, or personal emails from their audience, to which they will have to reply to and manage? And most importantly, if their EDM is reported as spam by multiple unhappy receivers, the email address will then be negatively affected when they try to send regular work related emails.

What does it mean to be penalised from the direct mail software?
It is extremely important your database is as clean as possible when sending out EDMs, as receiving too many hard or soft bounces can result in penalisation from the direct mail software which can limit or restrict your send-out ability. The software does this to help prevent the potential risk of spam being sent from their services.

What is the difference between hard and soft bounces?
When you hit send and receive hard bounces it means the email address no longer exists and therefore the email can not be delivered. Whereas a soft bounce means there is a temporary reason why the email has not been delivered, such as issues with the receivers email hosting, but can be identified as still in use.

Get started today

The specialist team at Cocktail Marketing manages multiple ongoing email marketing campaigns. From developing communication strategies specifically customised to their needs to designing high quality email and providing detailed reporting, giving them complete peace of mind. Benefits include: lead generation, customer acquisition, engagement and loyalty. By retargeting existing customers, you’ll grow brand awareness and increase sales. Fully utilise your communication channels with your own database by contacting us today.

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