The key to an effective email marketing campaign is to cast a wide net, but with an added personal touch and the ability to analyze your results.
“It’s important to make your emails personal, and get away from the corporate-style emails that make it seem like you are trying to sell them something,” says Ian Brodie, a marketing coach based in Manchester, England, who specializes in email marketing.
In order to build a relationship, he adds, you have to have a strong understanding of who your clients are and what information is valuable to them.
Brodie offers the following suggestions to help you get more from your email marketing campaigns:
> Tell a story
How do you build relationships with hundreds or thousands of prospects?
To help you begin to build a trusting relationship with your audience, Brodie says, you have to make your emails personal, encouraging recipients to contact you instead of trying to pitch them on a specific product or service.
The best way to do make your message personal is with a story, says Brodie: “People are hard-wired to be interested in stories, much more than in facts and figures.”
> Create lists
A sure way to turn someone off is to bombard their inbox with materials that they think are irrelevant.
For example, a passive investor probably won’t be interested in reading this week’s research reports on market trends or brochures on the latest exempt-market products in the same way as an active or accredited investor.
Your task, then, is to recognize which clients fit into each of those groups. When preparing your content, build two or three “interest barometers,” with different versions tailored to the various types of recipients.
“Identify their needs,” Brodie says, “and send them only the information that is geared toward them.”
> Get professional
Use a professional email marketing system. It will make organizing tasks and analyzing the results much simpler.
With the proper system in place, you will be able to track who opens your emails and whether they clicked on any of your links. This information is crucial to the success of your campaign.
For example, when your analytics identify a recipient who has paid extra attention to your message and clicked on many of your links, you know that person may be receptive to getting a call from you about setting up a potential face-to-face meeting.
This is the first article in a two-part series on email marketing. Next week: more tips on how to make the most of your campaign.