Helpful tips for your next email campaign

A guest post by Renee Martinez a mother of 4, blogger and marketing consultant.
Knowing and understanding your customers intimately is essential for you to be successful in business. With an effective email campaign, you have the opportunity to understand your customers through tracking if they open your email and more specifically, where they click once they open it. This information is valuable and can translate into a more comprehensive assessment of customer interests and trends. While this seems easy enough, let me assure you; it’s not. Like every marketing effort, you need a strategy.

Allow me to provide you with an example:
I receive a monthly email newsletter from my chiropractor. I have received it every month for nearly two years. I opened the first one to find the dreary text format unreadable and impersonal and have since never opened it again. Frankly, I find it rather annoying that they haven’t even checked their stats to notice that I haven’t so much as opened it and remove me from their list. By not removing me, I perceive what they send as spam.

There are several ways to avoid the above scenario.

• Develop a plan. How you will acquire email addresses. What information are your recipients interested in that you can provide in an easy-to-read approach. How can you provide information that is interesting, sets you apart from your competition, and on a regular basis?
• Only send emails to people who have opted-in or given permission to receive you messages.
• Send emails on a regular basis. If you decide to develop a monthly campaign, make sure it gets out every month. Doing your campaign in-house? While it may save a little money, beware of how other assignments can affect the timeliness of your emailer. I have many stories of people who have started their campaign in-house and wound up hiring-out to maintain a regular schedule.
• Design a campaign that maximizes your opportunity to capture customer interests through tracking.

* For new members, be sure to send them a “We’re glad you signed up for our newsletter!” Type of email. It should include an opportunity to change or manage their preferences at any time.

* For existing members, send them a statement that reminds them why they are receiving your email (ie. because they previously granted you permission to send them news and special offers from your business). It should also include an opportunity to change or manage their preferences at any time. This simple can have a strong impact building and developing your customer relationships.

• If your customer has not opened an email from you within a predetermined amount of time, remove them from your list. Before doing so, consider sending a note via snail mail (a great reason to have corresponding address information) telling them they will be removed from your newsletter email list. You may want to send them a coupon or promotion to invite them into the store. If they do not respond, remove them and send them a postcard that states you’ve do so.

Managing your email campaign effectively will reduce potential spam complaints, increased reader perception of your business, elevated credibility with customers, increased response results by eliminating members that don’t open your emails and increased customer satisfaction with your newsletter.

As the mother of four boys (ages 8, 5, 3 and 9 months), Renee Martinez has an interest in providing women information on how to raise responsible, respectful and confident members of society that mothers could be proud of.

Renee’s blog, Mothers Raising Boys (www.mothersraisingboys.com) grew out of constantly being bombarded with comments from random people like, “Wow. Four boys. You must be busy!” or “Four boys! You’re life must be crazy! How can you handle it?!”. The comments made her crazy. “My boys are the least of my troubles. They are really a joy. I wanted to create a forum for people with boys who need help as well as for people who really want a community of moms with similar experiences. A place where we can gather and share information that might in someway help create a voice for moms struggling with issues associated with raising boys.”

Renee worked in marketing before venturing into motherhood, but decided to try to work as a marketing communications consultant after the birth of her first son. One thing led to another and nearly 10 years later, she’s still trying to blend the two worlds of work and family. She’s worked on some great projects for clients nationwide, from designing and writing websites, newsletters, email campaigns, logos, marketing plans, public relations campaigns, brochures to developing marketing strategies and ad campaigns. For business marketing services, her business is called Ruby Communication (www.rubycommunication.com). For consumer communication products, such as invitations and announcements, her business is called Ruby Printcess (www.rubyprintcess.com).

Renee has also written several articles on internet marketing.

Tagged as: email marketing tips, mom entrepreneur