An effective email marketing campaign involves careful planning.
Ian Brodie, a marketing coach based in Manchester, England, who specializes in email marketing, offers up some best practices for your email marketing campaign:
> A strong call to action
Just as in your webinar, you need to have a strong call to action.
“Even if you have brilliant material, clients aren’t automatically going to hire you,” Brodie says. “They are going to want to speak to you first, so that’s the way you need to shape your email campaign.”
Avoid distributing a “transactional” email, in which you offer a discount on a product — similar to something you might get from a bookstore or other online retailer.
“They don’t work for financial advisors,” Brodie says, “because they don’t encourage a relationship with clients. Your objective should be to get a face-to-face meeting.
> Timing is everything
Send smaller emails, more frequently. This strategy is better than doing a large monthly email blast because your call to action doesn’t have to be as blatantly stated.
Says Brodie: “It’s like you have to shout out at them [in a monthly email] to give you a call. It feels like you are selling to them and people don’t like that.”
With shorter emails every couple of days, you are being gentler in your approach and aren’t overselling yourself. You are also more likely to get a prospect at just the right time.
> Your links are important
If you follow the shorter and more frequent approach, avoid bogging down your text with multiple links.
Include only one or two links that are extremely relevant to your pitch.
Also note that every commercial email you send should have an “unsubscribe” link, in case your prospects don’t want to receive your newsletter. You don’t want them to get grumpy with you every time they get an unsolicited email.
> Ask permission
If you plan to import your entire address book and business card database as recipients of your email marketing campaign, think again, says Brodie: “Just because you’ve got someone’s business card or email doesn’t mean it is OK to put them on your regular mailing list.”
Instead, he says, you must ask their permission before you put them on your regular mailing list.
A good way to have this discussion is when you get a new business card. Mention then that you do a regular email and ask whether they would like to be on your distribution list.
This is the second article in a two-par series on email marketing.