When a question comes up twice in one week, I know that it’s an answer worth sharing. Recently, several clients are looking to reboot their marketing efforts and are turning to email campaigns as part of their toolbox. That’s fantastic because you have to do more than put information on your website or social media. I have always said that marketing needs a healthy balance of push and pull. So what are some best practices when it comes to email management?  Read on:

Use an email management system

Email management systems like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp help you stay within the boundaries of FCC regulations and can help you from having your email or IP address blacklisted. It happened to me once. Trust me, it was no joke! Especially for someone in my line of work.

Use the equipment that you have available

Your email management campaigns are more powerful when you can quickly reach the right person and relay a message that is relevant. You can do that if you use the equipment that you have available to you. A good example is segmenting.

These days, most email apps work like a lite version of a customer relationship tool. Technically, when you add a contact to an email management system like Constant Contact, the connection goes into one list. You can tag them to include them on whatever and as many lists you choose. You can see what they have opened, clicked on, and even add notes to their records. This helps you really get to know your customer rather than just shoot emails at them.

Special note: Some people believe that these email management systems will prevent you from sending duplicate emails. It does, if used correctly. For instance, if you choose to send one email to multiple lists, Constant Contact will do the work of making sure that the contact only receives one email. If you send one email to each list separately, the contacts that are duplicated will receive both emails. No bueno!

Play to win

If you’re going to play, play to win. Playing to win means that you need to know how you rank. You don’t have to be stat rat but you should pay attention to the reports and analytics. Email management systems provide you with all sorts of useful information such as when your contact is no longer at a company, what your clients are most interested in, and when it the best time reach them. It’s all about the reports and the numbers. The idea here is to have continuous improvement and you can’t do that unless you watch the tapes and do some analysis.

 

Avoid a frozen account

For the protection of all clients, email management companies will freeze your account if too many of your emails are flagged as spam. You risk your list being invalidated. How can you prevent that?

Any company will say to start with a list of people that you have relationships with. Purchasing lists are a no-no. In this situation, your email will be reported as spam because it IS spam.

One way to avoid your email as being flagged too many times for spam is to include an opt-out message front and center.  For instance, at the top of the email, you can something like: “You are receiving this email because we have had previous contact. We are starting a new engagement program, and I wanted to make sure we kept in touch. If you prefer not to receive these email, please don’t mark this spam. Simply opt out by clicking this link.”  Constant Contact makes this step easy with a pre-templated option. You may cringe at this idea, but you are better off embracing this practice. Your email list may be smaller, but it will be more valuable in the end.

Don’t buy the lists

There are companies that will sell you email lists. Their solicitations sound worthwhile but keep this in mind: The average receipt rate is 10%. Because the receipt rate is low, the conversion rate is minuscule, so while the cost of the list may be cheap, you should realize that any money spent is money that could be spent on something that will provide a better return on investment.

These companies may offer you a money-back guarantee but read the small print. The guarantee is that the email gets to the server — not to the intended party. If that is not enough to convince you…go back and read the section on having your account frozen again because this is what you risk.

Do I have a preference?

As a consultant, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a variety of systems from marketing automation to simple email management apps. When you’re looking for an easy-to-use, economical marketing Constant Contact is my preference. They constantly run promo offers.  Full disclosure, I am a partner but only because I like their product and the service I get is fantastic.

If you are interested in opening a Constant Contact account, use this link to sign up. I will be able to access your account through my portal and provide you with service on your account. If you are looking for a more robust automation system, I have some favorites in this arena too but we should chat since these systems are all so different.

There is definitely more to creating a successful email marketing program.

Do you have more questions about email management and how? Feel free to reach out to me via email or phone.ahd