Email marketing for beginners

Email Marketing

Email marketing, one of the most common forms of marketing. Marketers in large companies, small companies and all points between use email marketing. Email marketing crosses all sectors and is used for all sorts of communication.

Which email marketing platform should you choose?

So you’ve already got a system in place, the first thing to do is make sure you’re utilising it to it’s full potential. Even with all the other tools available, the discipline of regular email marketing is something all marketing teams need to be well versed in. You should only consider changing what you’re already using if you have found shortcomings in your platform that hinders results.

With so many variables what do you need to get right with email campaigns?
A contentious point fiercely debated by many, we at renew use an evidence based measurable marketing approach as standard.

Data

The number 1 critical factor with email marketing is data. The quality of your data determines the scope of your success. This is why some sectors should expect greater success than others, and conversely why other sectors can struggle to get off the starting blocks.

Subject line

Millions of emails don’t get past the subject line and go straight to the trash can. Fact is, your subject line is the first part of your email that’s easy to test and find out what works and what doesn’t. So ensuring that this element of your email is right is imperative.

Responsiveness

Does your email work on a mobile phone? With such an almighty proportion of email marketing being viewed on mobile, if you haven’t thought of your target audience and user, you risk the trash can and unsubscribe buttons just by having emails that can’t be viewed on all devices.

Content

As with websites, focus your content on the recipient. First step is forget what you want to say, consider what the recipient wants to read. The more you can bring your content round to this method of development, the greater the success.

Call to action

What should someone do upon reading your email? What action will they take? What’s in it for the recipient? Your call to action needs to be obvious and direct. Therefore make it easy for your recipients.

So by using decent data, a subject line that will grab the right kind of attention, a format that recipients can read easily, content that they’ll want and a clear call to action, the basic formula for successful email marketing is explained.

At Renew Marketing, the solutions delivered for clients take all this into account and a whole lot more.

Most of our email marketing clients contact us because they want to achieve better results from their activities.

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Issue marketing brief

Complete the simple to use form for issuing a solid marketing brief to your team of choice.

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Website test and recommendations

Complete the simple to use form for issuing a solid marketing brief to your team of choice.

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2 email marketing techniques that deliver better results

What are the best email marketing techniques to deliver results? The debate goes on as to how to gain maximum effectiveness from email marketing. There is evidence to show that email marketing works best in both pre-sales and after sales strategies. The key to the most effective email marketing is the timing and the content.

Today’s world is very much about service and content on demand. Personalisation is also high on the agenda for many marketing managers (although this may be misunderstood). I did read recently that subscribers and consumers have become very accustomed to personalisation and are starting to question the safety of their data.

So how do personalised email marketing strategies work most effectively?
How can you maximise engagement and return on investment without spooking your subscribers?

It’s no secret that most email systems will enable you to embed subscriber information into the body of the emails you wish to send out. The trick here is not to overuse client information. Use it once but then only use it when it’s relevant to the content of the message. So what are the real secrets?

What is the best timing for email marketing?

Most organisations use email marketing. The level of sophistication is where the most difference is found.

Ok, in order to get timing and content perfect, you need your subscribers to tell you what they want and when. The problem is with thousands of subscribers, this may seem like an impossible issue to resolve. Not so!

Once you appreciate the triggers that you can use to automate communication processes and database updates, the value of automation becomes more obvious. Let’s explain this in two parts; firstly, triggers and secondly, actions.

Email marketing techniques #1 – Automation

Triggers

Not only are there obvious triggers within your business such as a customer placing an order but there are a multitude of other triggers which you may not even be aware you can track and utilise. Sophisticated email systems (forget the free ones) have the capability to covertly track subtle interactions, and for that matter lack of interactions with your emails. You may be familiar with the standard information such as open rates and bounces but this takes that email marketing technique a step further. The smarter systems can monitor click throughs. As a report, this information may be useful BUT there’s a better way to use it.

Actions

The question now comes as to what SHOULD happen when a subscriber interacts with your information? Dependent on the trigger you may want a number of different actions. Whether you simply want the database to capture the subscriber’s preference information, you wish to send a follow up email, you’d like your sales team to be notified or even a whole new set of emails is triggered, all of this is possible.
How you set your actions need not be overly sophisticated , although it can be.

The client’s automation was set up to deliver instant notifications to the sales team. The notifications were pre-populated with the subscriber’s information, also detailing their specific interaction.

232 red hot leads were generated within the space of 2 hours for a total investment of less than £1000.

With an average sales value of £3000, a conversion rate of 1% would generate revenue of over £11,000.
These figures become even more attractive as you increase the broadcast volumes. If, for example, the subscriber database was increased to a number of 400,000, the set up and distribution costs would be less than £20,000 but the returns would be in the region of £104M.

In a recent email broadcast.
4000 contacts delivered an open rate of 29% (1160)
and a click through rate of 20% (232).

The real beauty of email is its low distribution cost and instantaneous nature. Scalable email communications need automation and with all the triggers available, delivering comprehensive automated email communication has never been more straight forward. The real key is knowing where email marketing will deliver you best value.
Conditional marketing is the use of preference information to determine the content presented to the subscriber.

Email marketing techniques #2 – Conditional content

This email marketing technique needs a little explanation. If, for example, a travel company’s database showed a subscriber to have a preference for city breaks, the system could use that information to populate the content of that particular subscribers message to be specific to city breaks.

Conversely, a subscriber showing preference toward long haul breaks could have their message content determined to suit them. To use this to best effect, you need to rely on automation and let your subscribers determine the information they want.
Conclusion

Email marketing techniques are used by many organisations but by using the above 2 secrets, the more advanced organisations are gaining business critical edge over their competitors. The examples used are very basic are purely illustrative of the types of functions an organisation may wish to emulate.
To really capitalise on these secrets, an organisation should embrace the technology and apply it in all relevant places.

Find out more about how you can take advantage of these email marketing techniques.

By Ryan Mullins

How Email Marketing Automation can streamline your sales process

What is email marketing automation?

Email marketing automation is a valuable marketing tool which enables you to build customer relationships. By automating your email campaigns you can build a profile of your prospects and customers so that you only contact them with information they are likely to be interested in. This is based on their previous interactions, meaning you don’t overload people with information that is of no interest to them.

An example of a simple Email Automation Campaign

A car dealer sends out an introduction email to its database detailing their latest offers on their new models. Our email automation software (rmcom) will automatically record which link each email record clicks on. Based on this information, a second email will automatically be sent giving more information on the model of the car/s they (have previously clicked on) are interested in.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]Number of email accounts in the world = 3.2 billion
91% of email users check their account daily[/typography]

Read on to discover the many benefits of Email Automation and how it can help your business increase sales.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Develop Prospects[/typography]

Email is a tried and tested way of engaging prospects and existing customers alike. With automated email campaigns you filter your marketing campaigns so that you only send relevant messages to your prospects. The more you can relate to people with engaging relevant information, the more likely they are to interact with you and ultimately become a customer.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Timing is everything[/typography]

You can programme rmcom to automatically contact records at timely intervals. This can be based around key buying dates (contract renewal dates) or you can send emails one day, one week or one month after a previous email has been opened- Anything is possible!

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Personalised Communication[/typography]

One of the most basic functions of rmcom is that you can personalise your email campaigns effortlessly.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]A personalised subject line can increase your open rates by over 35%[/typography]

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Unopened email still gets your brand gets promoted[/typography]

Every time emails are sent you increase your brand awareness, just by appearing in their inbox. Remember 93% of emails are checked daily, so even if your email is not opened the odds are high that your company name has been seen just by landing in their inbox.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Every communication will (eventually) be read[/typography]

If your email isn’t read within a specified time scale, rmcom can be programmed so that your communication will automatically re-send, again and again until it is opened.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Work your hot sales leads[/typography]

By automating your email campaigns, you free up your sales team’s time to focus on the hot sales leads your campaigns produce.
Every time someone interacts with your email a notification can be sent to your sales team so that they can follow this up….in real time if required!

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Ongoing Promotion of your Business[/typography]

Email automation continuously keeps in contact with your customers. The more frequently your name appears in someone’s inbox, the more likely they are to recognise your company name, remember it, and buy from you when the time is right.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Reach customers on mobile[/typography]
People check emails on their smart phones. Reaching your customer on their mobile gets your email read, clicked-through and converted. We can also set up campaigns to reach your customers via SMS campaigns.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]You will increase your website traffic through email automation.[/typography]

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Drive traffic to your website and record it[/typography]

Email gets people who are interested in your brand to click-through to your website. rmcom will record the pages they click through to and even what time of day they are likely to read your email. All this makes targeted marketing campaigns much easier and extremley cost effective.

Get in touch with Renew Marketing if you would like to understand more about how rmcom can streamline your sales process and generate additional sales using email marketing automation.

By Lorraine Mullins

Why do you need marketing automation? Reduce the cost of communication

Marketing automation is big news in business because it helps reduce costs of communication.

It’s simple, machines do things more efficiently than human beings.

So what’s actually meant by marketing automation?

Communicating can be a costly exercise. When you consider call centres and what it takes to run a call centre. Many businesses have off shored call centres to try to reduce cost. In many businesses this has been criticised as people don’t feel like they get a personal touch.

Personalisation of communication is at the heart of quality information exchange.

Communication has success critical features that, when handled correctly, improve quality, success and efficiency. In turn this reduces cost.

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Timing of contact
Relevance of content
Information Exchange

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Reducing the cost of running a call centre and sales operation.

For a business that has 35 teleappointers making outbound sales calls 9-5, 5 days a week. It would also take a sales team of 15 on the road to sit appointments generated by the outbound team.

This business has access to databases of thousands of businesses around the UK. Each teleappointer makes c.100 calls a day generating 2 appointments each. This means 70 appointments a day are being booked. Of these appointments, around 50% drop out and there is a sales conversion of 25% of sat appointments.

With these kinds of stats it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the sales value of wins needs to be 5 figures upwards to satisfy the wages demand, let alone the commissions and operational costs.

This kind of wastage in sales is undesirable but all too common.

The benefits of marketing automation in sales.

So going on the figures above, the outbound sales team are hitting 3500 contacts a day to deliver 70 appointments. One intelligent e-shot with open and click through notifications would provide enough information to determine warm prospects at the time they are most likely to take a call.

Based on an open rate of 25% and a click through rate of 20%, this activity would generate 175 warm leads, requiring 2 teleappointers to work through. This may provide sufficient leads to convert to 70 appointments. Thats would provide a reduction in cost of 90%.

What’s the cost of marketing automation?

There are 3 major considerations when setting up marketing automation.

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Data
If you’ve already got plenty of data, you’re onto a winner. Data can be costly dependent on how targeted your audience.
Content
If you’re already have tons of content and produce tons of content, you’re in a stronger position than those who do not.
Complexity
The simpler your processes, the less they cost to set up. As you add complexity, programming and testing become more arduous.

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Where should you start with marketing automation?

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Gain the assistance of providers who done it before.
Set out your objectives.
Determine your budget for phase 1.
Agree Milestones and KPI’s with your team.
Set out a realistic timeline.

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Marketing automation is quickly becoming a need of any business that wishes to communicate regularly with any group of recipients. Whether it be new business, existing clients or simply news subscribers, marketing automation is one of the most effective methods of keeping costs of mass communication to a minimum.

By Ryan Mullins

Google hack – how to achieve page 1 ranking

How do you get your website onto page 1 on google and other search engines?

The secret to achieving a Google page 1 ranking

Achieving a Google search page 1 ranking has swiftly become the Holy Grail for online businesses—after all, how many punters ever bother to go onto the second page of a search? And reaching this nirvana has spawned a whole new industry of SEO consultants and experts who would have you believe there is some arcane and complex magic for nudging your way up the search results.

But…getting onto page 1 for a Google search isn’t difficult at all!

Yes—that’s true, despite what SEO and internet gurus might have you believe. It’s simply a matter of following a specific formula and being mindful of competition for the phrases you want to rank for. And we’re willing to share the secret with you, so you can reconfigure your pages to achieve the Google, Bing or Yahoo search ranking you want.

Just a word before you start…

Take this example: a local insurance broker approached us and said, “We want to appear on page 1 of Google.”

We asked them what search term they wanted to achieve page 1 for.

“Insurance!” they said, naturally enough.

We had to ask, “How deep are your pockets?”

With the pressure of online competition, not deep enough! And this is the root of the problem. This company, by wanting to rank on page 1 for “insurance” was setting itself up in competition with all the hundreds of thousands of other insurance companies all over the world. And although “insurance” is an applicable search term for this small local business, it does nothing to set them apart from the rest of the competition.

The problem is, how do you rank on page 1 without diluting your message?

It’s all to do with the search terms you choose. If you pick a high competition key phrase that attracts a huge volume of searches, you’ll find it nigh on impossible to achieve a page 1 rank on Google or any of the other search engines. Not totally impossible—but if you do get to the top, your competitors will be snapping at your heels and you’ll find it incredibly difficult to maintain your position.

So how can you achieve a page 1 ranking?

Here’s our guide to raising your page up the search engine ranks.

Research your keywords to differentiate your business. For example, if you’re an insurance broker in Bedford, specialising in commercial risks, don’t attempt to be page 1 for “insurance”. You’ll be better served by ranking for “commercial insurance Bedford”.
Understand search volumes. Once you’ve identified some possible search phrases for your business, you need to be mindful of how many people are using them. After all, being number 1 for a phrase that nobody is using isn’t going to make you particularly discoverable.
Identify your site’s key pages. There will be certain pages on your site that are valuable to you and your customers. You need to know which pages these are and what information your visitors are looking for. Use analytics to identify your top ranking pages.
Optimise your site to make it easier for Google to read. Google isn’t human and it needs information to be configured in a specific way in order to find it. If you leave out what it’s looking for, your pages won’t rank. Every single page needs to contain the following information:

Key phrases that are specific to the page
META Title – this needs to contain the key phrase(s)
URL – must contain the key phrase(s)
META Description – also needs to contain the key phrase(s)
The first, second and final paragraphs must all feature the key phrase(s)

If this still seems a little daunting or if you simply haven’t the time to review all the pages on your site, we can help you to gain a page 1 ranking for Google and other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo. Our first step is to assess your site and make a recommendation on how much work will be required. Then you can decide whether you’d like us to transform your search engine rankings.