What To Do & When To Do It.

 

When it’s time to launch your email marketing campaign, what should you know before you set your plan into motion?  Well, before you do anything, you should make certain that your sales staff and all sales departments are geared up to make the transactions generated by your email marketing campaign.  Once you’re confident your business can handle a potential influx of sales, you should follow a few simple steps to ensure you’re making the most of your email marketing campaign. 

 

The checklist below will help you to determine what to do and when to do it. 

 

Determine what day of the week to send your messages.  The theories on this choice are numerous.  Many experts suggest targeting individual customers over the weekend but business-to-business prospects on a Friday. However, a recent study indicates the best day to issue B2B email marketing messages is Monday or Tuesday.  The truth is, there is no hard and fast rule for this; just do your own research and testing to determine what day works best for your business. 

Additionally, there are two times of day that are historically best for sending a marketing email, mid-morning and right after lunch.  At these two times, people tend to be more receptive to what lands in their inbox.  

 

Create your e-mail. Now it’s time to create and deliver your email. Make sure that it’s attractive, but not too “spammy” so that your customers will be inclined to read it and find it easy to navigate.  An effective e-mail delivery system (such as Mailchimp or Aweber) will enable you to track the performance of your email campaign, enabling you to make adjustments and improvements next time. 

 

Monitor responses. After you’ve sent your marketing email, you should be prepared to monitor responses.  Your monitoring efforts should cover everything from replies to un-subscribes.  Monitoring your responses early can help you to eliminate and even avoid certain link and spam problems – and should give you more data to determine the best time to send your campaign.

 

And here’s a summarized “tip list” derived from various email marketing experts.  Take some time to review these tips and implement them to be sure of your email marketing success.

 

Before you start!

Decide on the purpose of your campaign – is it to sell a product, gather e-mail addresses or start on the first stage of a sales funnel?

 

Offer something to your customers!

Whatever the aim of your campaign, getting prospect details is paramount (you’ve all heard the mantra “The money’s in the list”). In exchange for their contact info, offer your customers something in return. (i.e., a free newsletter, or seminar, or more information)

 

Be economical about the info you gather!

When gathering customer contact information, only ask for the information you need. The more info you ask for, the less likely people are to give it to you!

 

Overdeliver!

Whatever your offer is (free or paid) make sure you deliver more than your prospect/customer expected. It will encourage repeat visits and make it easier to upsell or crosssell later.

 

Make it easy for contacts to unsubscribe!

Make absolutely certain you provide a way for customers to unsubscribe from your e-mail marketing solutions campaign – and, of course, make sure their unsubscribe request is honoured.