Snap Marketing

Email marketing is great – on the face of it cheap because there is no postage – and the effects can be measured.  But it’s the norm now and its effect is diminishing – but any marketing activity is more effective when executed in conjunction with other outbound techniques that act in a complementary fashion.

There are various pieces of research done as to how many different exposures to a company’s marketing it takes to register any interest with a prospect in the target audience.  And this is may not even be “buying” interest – it might just be recognition at the most basic level.  Depending on whose papers you read, it could be anywhere between 7 and 30 exposures to a marketing message before any sort of positive response is measured. (Maybe a topic for the next post!)

So it makes sense to capitalise on this particular aspect of consumer behaviour and ensure that marketing activity is spread out over a campaign that is regularly repeated almost to the point that a prospect starts to expect a piece of marketing from you.

However, as you might imagine, the more times a marketing message is repeated in exactly the same fashion, the less impact it has.  So how do we over come this?

In our series of blogs on email marketing, Successful e-Mail Marketing and 5 Great Ways to Increase e-Mail Marketing Effectiveness we discuss the mechanics of the how to put together an effective digital marketing campaign, but there is massive mileage to be gained from mixing up digital marketing with traditional marketing techniques.

Combine to accelerate performance

Email marketing, coupled with landing pages and landing page optimisation will be effective, but at a low level making it a numbers game.  From experience, a 5-10% open rate for emails is about the norm and 1-2% click through would be good.  But these numbers can be doubled or tripled by mixing up email marketing with other outbound marketing tools. Here are some ideas off how this might work, based on our own experiences.

Direct Mail

Snail mail is often derided by the new age of digital marketing gurus, but our experience is that a well thought out direct mail can be really effective.  And especially so in conjunction with email marketing.  A piece of direct mail arriving through the post is a bit of a novelty now and you have to hold it in your hand to do anything with it.  It might not get read, but at least you have a better chance of the content being scanned. The simple fact is that an email takes just a click to consign to the recycle bin folder (or Junk Folder – even worse) – you don’t have to even look at the content.

Send a postcard to the same audience a week after the email shot and relate the content back to the email so there is a clear linkage in the message.  You might want to either replicate the same message or offer a complementary one, but you must measure its effect.  Do this with a bespoke landing page on the website; point the recipient at different landing pages for each version of the post card and you can see from both the calls to action and analytics which version converts better.

You can expect your campaign performance to improve by another 100% with a follow up direct mail piece.

However, postage is expensive though and you are going to be paying probably at least £1 a pop for each card you send out.  If budget is constrained, think perhaps about sending postcards only to those who have opened the email – after all they are interested enough to open the email – or maybe segment your list and send the postcards out to those prospects that you would most like to convert.

Targeted letters to key prospects

Staying with the theme of snail mail, another tactic that is incredibly successful is to identify a small sub-set of really desirable prospects off your email list and to research them as thoroughly as you can.  You would be amazed how much information you can trawl from the internet for the simple reason is that key decision makers usually generate a lot of personal PR, which gives you an insight into their position on a variety of topics. Craft a letter to these individuals referencing firstly the issues that you have found a common interest in and secondly the other key people in the organisation that you are also writing to.  Indicate you will also call them in 48 hours to have a discussion about said issues. Use a fountain pen if you have one or something that looks like one and hand-write “Dear abc” instead of typing it and sign it “Yours sincerely, your name” in ink – not biro and hand write the envelope.  You will be staggered when you make that call and find out your target has got your letter sitting on his desk and has been looking forwards to your call.

Telephone Marketing

A follow up telephone call after the email blast, will further double your campaign performance.  And if you have also extended your message with direct mail, expect serious non-linear performance improvement.

Written by Matthew Simmons

In our Successful email marketing blog last month, we talked about the things that effect the success of the email marketing campaign.

We talked about the importance of avoiding spam filters, headlines,  email content and landing pages and I want to explore this topic a bit further.

The reality is that e-mail marketing, and I am talking about marketing to cold prospects here, is that to maximise the conversion rate, we need to think about the whole project as a journey along which we are taking the prospect and his motivation for taking your preferred action at each stage.

Stage One – Seductive Subject Lines

The subject line is the single most important way-point along this journey.  Its objective is just to get the email opened – nothing else.  So it has to be relevant, non-spammy, and seductive enough to engage with the pain factors that you have identified in your product proposition.

The reason that the subject line is the single most important factor  is that if we don’t get the email opened at all, all that other good work is wasted.

Stage Two – Headline

The only objective of the headline is to get the prospect to read the email – so again engage with his pain – maybe with a question such as  “Like to save 20% of your next tax bill?” If you have done your research, your prospects should be pre-qualified and will be looking for such answers. And then support this headline with a short supporting statement about how your product achieves this.  This will encourage the reader to seek more information in the body of the email – job done!

Stage  Three – Email Content

The purpose of the email content is not to explain every detail about your product proposition.  Its only purpose is to achieve your preferred call to action such as to click on a video demo, download a useful freebie, or to seek more information.

So why would a prospect do this?  Again we need to engage with his pain, build trust and encourage conversion to the next stage.  The prospect is looking for answers to his needs.  Focus on these in the copy – tell the prospect whats in it for him – not whats in it for you!

Build trust through supporting client testimonials and be very clear about where you will take him at each stage of his next steps. For example “Why not view a short demo”  “Take our free 30 day trial”

Stage Four – Call to Action

Limit these in number, we do not want to confuse the prospect with too much choice. And point them to a landing page with reference point back to the email content.

The number one best way of really upsetting the prospect is to either take them to the home page – whey they are effectively then abandoned to find their own way around, or dump them on a landing page which lacks relevance.

Be very targeted in the choices you offer on the landing page, make them relevant and remember the journey we are taking the prospect along – help him make the choices that work for him.

Stage Five – Landing Pages

The best way of achieving effective landing pages is by deciding exactly what objectives you need from the campaign up front.  Maybe you want them to view the demo, or to take the free trial, but whatever, having got them to the landing page you do need to ensure that we have some result – even if its too subscribe to your newsletter.

Again, a headline that engages, a supporting line about how your product achieves this and trust building through testimonials – you have more real-estate to play with on a landing page so you can go into more detail to inform and build that trust.

This is where you close the deal.

Keep everything that you really, really want them to click on “above the fold” (the bottom of the screen) and keep the content focused on what’s in it for them.

If you enjoyed this blog, check out the last in the series on how to link e-mail marketing with traditional techniques to really turbo charge your marketing investment.

Written by Matthew Simmons