6 Tips for Effective Email Marketing in 2008

Pick Your Leader
Don't let your most effective marketing tool play second fiddle to your company's other marketing efforts. Too often, we see a general lack of leadership and responsibility in our clients' approach to email marketing. When a single person within your business or organization is responsible for the effectiveness of your email marketing program, it begins to get the attention it deserves. By identifying the leader of your email marketing program, you will not only increase program effectiveness and productivity, but you'll also facilitate better communication and ultimately a higher return-on-investment.

Establish A Schedule
Next, ask your email program leader create a schedule of target delivery dates and associated deadlines for each month and include core topics. The schedule should serve as a your email marketing road map for 2008. It should be regimented enough to establish a clear course of travel, yet remain flexible enough to leave room for changes and adjustments along the way.

Clear The Deadwood
Start by running a "Most Active User Report" and remove everyone that did not open a single email in the last 12 months. It's silly to send to someone who doesn't want to read what you have to say, and it's also a waste of time and money! This will also give you a better overall reporting on the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Get Relevant
By now, it's common knowledge that the best and most effective email marketing campaigns utilize list segmentation in order to deliver the most relevant information. This technique has proven to produce the most effective results. Segmenting lists is easy to do and starts by asking for the right information during the opt-in process. If you'd like to know more about your existing subscribers, consider implementing a creative survey and/or contest campaign to get your subscribers to tell you more about themselves.

Make It Easy
It's also no secret that the best list is a pure, permission-based, double opt-in subscriber list. As you can expect to lose somewhere between 15-20% of your list each year to list churn (bad emails, inactive subscribers, etc.), it's important to make sure that you continue to consistently grow your list with new subscribers. Be sure to include a "quick subscribe" opt-in form on your home page that only requires and email address, and place a prevalent link to your main opt-in form on every other page of your website. Be sure to ask for any relevant information that you can use to segment your list – but keep your form short. Think of creative places to post a link to the your opt-in form: your email signature, online company invoices, and of course your contact us page to name a few. Also consider incentives and promos to encourage your site visitors to subscribe.

Make An Impression
You never get a second chance. By sending a professional welcome message, you'll capitalize on the opportunity to build the relationship with your new subscriber right away. Keep it simple, and give an explanation of what they can expect to receive. This is also a perfect time to follow-up on that promo that you offered for subscribing. You can take it one step further by asking your new subscribers to update their profile – thereby allowing you to segment and send more relevant information. And don't forget to include a link to your privacy statement.

If you have an existing email program with Blue Tent Marketing, and would like to schedule an account review to see how we can improve for 2008, please contact us and your email project manager will follow-up with you ASAP.