4 Important Email Marketing Tips For 2006

Pundits say that email marketing is dead. According to researches email marketing is far from being a thing of the past. But why do some marketers moan about bad results? Is email marketing outdated as compared to other forms of online advertising?

It turns out that poor responses are due to poor execution. Those who complain about poor responses do very little to reverse the trend. The ones who enjoy high response rates think, and plan before they execute their email marketing campaign.

The fact is experienced marketers are experiencing a surge in response in their email marketing campaign. Ad sales in email are rising and have sold out in certain niches.

In short it requires work on your part to see good response from your email marketing campaign.

Here are 4 important marketing tips for 2006...

1. Segmentation. Marketers who segment their lists to send the right offer to people who are most likely to be interested, gets higher response rates. The report also showed that the benefits of segmentation are not just limited to big lists with divers subscribers. It can have a dramatic effect on lists with less than 5K names. To improve email marketing response rates segmentation may be worth your effort.

2.Higher click thru rates with recent opt-ins. The response rates for recent opt-ins are higher. This is a fact known by the direct postal mail community for a long time. Both the opening and click through rates of emails are higher for new names especially for the first 30 days. Response drops steadily after 30 days. The next big drop is around the 60-day mark. From then on the response rates are steady.

The advice given by experts: Segment your file and send a whole 'Welcome' series of messages to those who are new on your list for their first 60 days. You should test whether these messages should supplement the routine email or replace them altogether. Travelocity have been testing these 'welcome series' and it may be high time online marketers with mailing lists adopt this practice.

3. Spam filters are still a dominant problem. They were introduced to filter off unsolicited junk mail. But in the process, legitimate opt-in mails are also filtered off. Most marketers assumed that their Email Service Providers (ESPs) are able to fix their problem. A lot of emails are stopped by spam filters, especially mails that are sent to workplace email addresses.

The truth of the matter is no ESP is able to completely protect your email copies from filters. Your ESP does not have control over your copy, the order of words in your subject line, your HTML code. Spam filters take these factors into consideration the types of mails to filter off.

At present, only 12 percent of B-B marketers are investing in deliverability services. This number is expected to rise in 2006. It would be worthwhile to invest in a deliverability service.

4.Fresh quality content. Educate and inform your subscribers. Don't just promote your business. A newsletter with poorly written content and lots of ads is a sure formula for failure. Over time your subscribers may just stop opening your mails or unsubscribe from your mailing list altogether. Spend time or hire someone to research and source for fresh quality content that is relevant to your niche on an ongoing basis.

It is imperative that you give thought to your email marketing campaign. A lot of newsletters have become a routine part of marketing that very little thought and creativity go into them. In short it requires work on your part to see good response continually from your email marketing campaign. Keep on improving and testing, improving and testing...

(*The figures in this article are sourced from MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006)


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