Get some online potential

We have just presented our first online marketing workshop for enterprise4all in Preston, UK. As usual email marketing was one of the hot topics that the attendants wanted to know most about.

E-mail marketing is still one of the most cost-effective ways of finding new clients and building a stronger relationship with current customers, but competition is fierce, the economic climate is looking decidedly inclement and your e-marketing messages have to work harder than ever to cut through the smog.

We worked one on one with each of the attendees and showed how email marketing fits into the big picture. It’s still amazing to find large organisations getting their e-marketing communications badly wrong. Some were still batch sending many thousands of emails from Outlook and had no idea if any one at all was reading them!

The fact is, even with all the SPAM and all the bad communication out there, email marketing still works. Often it’s just a matter of keeping your audience engaged for long enough until you manage to send the right message at the right time and make a sale.

Here is a short list of some of the points we highlighted at the workshop. They are the basic fundamentals of a successful campaign. We’ve talked about them many times before but they are worth repeating:

• Get personal – personally addressed e-mails with, if possible, personalised content is going to have more chance of establishing trust and a relationship
• Write a meaningful subject line and opening – write a succinct, transparent and descriptive overview of the offering you wish to promote. The reader should be able to work out within a few seconds if it is of interest and whether they wish to learn more
• Copy – Be concise and use short sentences, paragraphs and bullets points to ease reading
• Be sure to proof the copy – silly little mistakes stick out like a sore thumb and spoil all that effort you invested to make the perfect e-mail campaign.
• Test your e-mail before you send it – do a dry run to yourself and a sample group
• Answer all replies with 24 hours – e-mails are a quick and easy channel of communication and interested parties will want quick answers. Do not disappoint on the first and probably only time you will have to make a favourable impression