Depending on your business, your customers probably aren’t hearing from you as often as they need to.
That’s because for most people, “out of sight is out of mind.” So remind customers about the value you bring to their lives on a regular basis.
You wouldn’t go more than two weeks without talking to your good friend, so why go several weeks without talking to your best customers?
Here are some more tips for what’s working best in e-mail marketing right now:
Frequency:
Send some type of communication every 10 to 14 days, as long as it makes sense for your business. If you sell mattresses, furniture or cars, monthly or quarterly communication will make more sense.
Remember, it’s not just your customers that you’re communicating to, but also their family and friends. So even if someone just bought a car from you it still makes sense to stay in touch, because soon that person will be talking about their purchase with their friends and colleagues.
Most businesses send their newsletters out monthly, but research shows you’ll get better results if your prospects hear from you more often. But be realistic about what you can sustain over time. You can brainstorm a list of topics to write about based on the content needs of your customers. Just remember, shorter is better. If you are feeling overwhelmed with information, then your customers are too!
Content:
The ideal mix is a blend of educational and branding content mixed in with a promotion to support sales (coupons, giveaways, sweepstakes, etc.). Your educational and branding information should outweigh promotional content by a ratio of 8:2 or 9:1.
Remember to include information about your upcoming events. Your ultimate goal is to inform and entertain (and in most cases people want to be entertained more than they want to be informed!) You can also include surveys or encourage customers to submit questions that you’ll answer in a future newsletter.
If you’re struggling for ideas about what to write about, keep a list of questions that many customers ask you about on a regular basis. Ask your staff about the most common topics customers ask about, or keep a manila folder nearby to drop ideas into when they come up during the day. If they have an interesting conversation, that could be a topic for the newsletter. Listen to your customers for ideas. You can also look in online forums and online discussion rooms about topics relating to your industry. LinkedIn Answers is a great resource for finding industry topics that people are talking about.
Tone:
It’s okay to write your newsletter like a personal e-mail. Remember, value is not just useful content. People get value from being able to connect to other people on a personal and meaningful level. Especially in this technology age. People enjoy stories. Real value comes from learning who you and your company are as people. The personal connection becomes the most important element of “value”.
E-mail is a personal, one-to-one communications channel. Most newsletters focus too much on providing “value” but forget to add in the personal aspect. Make the personal aspect part of your unique brand.
Format:
The trend these days is away from long newsletters and toward shorter, more frequent blog posts. Are you suffering from information overload? Well, your customers are too! Instead of sending out monthly or quarterly newsletters with 1,500 words or more, consider if you could chunk your content down into shorter, more frequent e-mails instead. Or better yet, consider if your “newsletter” could be a short personal update with link to your latest blog article.
Graphics:
It’s good to have at least one picture to capture and draw interest in your content, just make sure your logo doesn’t dominate the entire e-mail preview pane window. Make sure your text at the top of your newsletter includes the name of your business and the first few lines of your content so that recipients can see your most valuable information first.
Text-only format works extremely well, too, and has been found to be the most compatible across all e-mail platforms.
“From” and “Subject” Line Fields:
The first two questions people ask themselves when they get any e-mail is: 1) Do I know this person? and 2) Do I care? Make sure your “from” and subject line fields answer both questions convincingly.
Use your real name and company name in your from line, as in, “Dr. Charles Kaempen, KUSA Industries.” Then, grab attention and tell your customers what the value will be in opening your message. “How to save 40% or more on your next installation.”
For more information about successful newsletter design, check out these resources:
Consider the number of people who are in your target demographic.
Look at the stores and brands and rank how relevant those brands are to yours. Do a large number of your customers shop at those stores? Small fraction? If your sign had an exceptionally compelling offer on it, how many of those 20,000 would “buy”? Is your business located nearby, and therefore convenient?
The value is a combination of how effective your sign is and the overall lifetime value of any customers that you may get as a part of a direct outcome of that sign.
Signage works best as part of an overall branding campaign
Will you be running any complimentary advertising while the sign is up? Direct mail to any of the customers that may see the sign? Do any customers of that center subscribe to your newsletter? A sign is most effective when part of an overall campaign, so that the sign become a reminder that they also saw your TV ad, or heard your radio spot, or just got an e-mail from you, and they’ve been meaningn to call you (or vote for you), but haven’t yet, and now they can because your number is on the sign (or they remembered its voting day).
Let’s Do an Example
Let’s presume you just want to estimate the value of one sign in a busy shopping center. So in that case, let’s also presume it’s going to be a great sign with a specific call to action on it. Like a phone number with instructions to call.
Budget about 1-2% “conversion” rate or more, depending on your unique area, market and industry.
For a shopping center with 20,000 people a day, assume that 200-400 people will be interested in your sign, and will want to take the next step.
Then consider how much a customer is worth. If 200 people are going into your sales funnel, and a small fraction of them end up buying a $20,000 product, that’s great value! But if your product sells for $10, then you’ll need more exposure to break even.
Finally, consider the cost of your sign.
Divide the cost of the sign by 200 (conservative) or 400 (optimistic) and see if the numbers make sense. How much are you willing to pay for each shopping center lead? $2? $14? $50?
Compare the cost of the sign, to what a lead from the shopping center is worth, and compare the effectiveness to other branding and marketing choices you may have.
Marketers have more choices than ever. You may find alternatives, such as inbound marketing, or spending one day at the shopping center talking to people and handing out coupons, may have a better value for your business.
Why, after 50 years, have news reports boiled down to this essential format?
As hilarious as this clip is, sadly I think it summarizes what has (unfortunately) probably become the best format for TV news, especially for those age 40 and above. It probably came about after years of research, or either reflects the best of what’s known about how TV viewers watch TV. Effective for today’s generation? No. But they’re not watching TV news.
What do you think?
Let me know your thoughts by posting a Comment below, or Share This with your friends.
I have been researching the impact the So Much More Hawaiisocial media and blogging tour had on the effort to promote Hawaii as a tourist destination site. It was the state of Hawaii’s first all social-media travel tour, and included all major islands.
Looking at the media coverage, I wondered, “Did the So Much More Hawaii Blogging Tour achieve it’s goals?” According to the campaign, the ultimate goal was “to inspire actions associated with travel to Hawaii,” online bookings and reservations.
In measuring public relations, Dr. Lindenmann, in Public Relations Research for Planning and Evaluation, describes that this type of change in behavior as the final level of campaign measurement — the ability to measure how individual initiatives contributed to overall campaign Outcomes.
However, Dr. Lindenmann also explains that successful Outcomes are predicated on successful metrics of Outputs (Web site traffic, RSS subscribers, page views, unique users) and Outgrowths (number of conversations started; better understanding of target markets; the ability to influence purchase decisions; growing a membership base; new ideas).
Outputs
The most commonly reported metrics in Social Media are “Outputs.” These are the types of metrics found in Google Analytics or WordPress dashboards. Dr. Lindenmann refers to these short-term, basic and immediate results of campaign measurement as the “first level” of measurement. Unfortunately, these rudimentary metrics do not tell the story of whether audiences understood a message or whether a particular message changed any behavior. Because the “Output” level covers the basic results of PR work, about 80% of all campaign evaluation is conducted at this level. It does not give a complete picture of a campaign’s success.
Outgrowths
The second-level of campaign measurement is campaign outgrowths — to measure whether strategic messages were received by intended audiences and whether those audiences did anything with or because of that information.
Hawaii HTA told Pacific Business News that one of the intended outgrowths of the social media campaign was to bridge the local social media and blogging community with the So Much More Hawaii team. Campaign officials also said the goals of the campaign were to:
• Increase awareness of all the Hawaiian islands on numerous social networking sites.
• Produce and share content about Hawaii’s traditions, values, and culture.
• Increase distribution and visibility for the content produced by the So Much More Hawaii campaign.
Without data about what the awareness levels were before the social media campaign began, it’s impossible to gauge the campaign’s impact on this area.
However, there are more than 1,000 Facebook sites dedicated to vacations in Hawaii, and with an established presence on Facebook, Hawaii HTA could have a direct pipeline of communication with people who are highly likely to visit Hawaii again.
What’s Next ?
Campaign’s organizer L.P. Neenz Faleafine has more than 1,100 subscribers to his personal Facebook page. As Hawaii HTA continues its social outreach, it would be great if Neenz could add the SoMuchMoreHawaii blog into his Facebook feed. Unfortunately, Facebook will limit Neenz’s personal profile to 5,000 fans, so eventually Hawaii HTA will need to set up a branded “Fan Page” to ensure full syndication of its content.
The benefits of Fan Pages are that there are no limits to subscribers and that anyone can post blog content using the Notes application. Fan Pages are also effecting at building opt-in subscription lists for special promotions that can drive even more online engagement. There are currently more than 200 million Facebook profiles worldwide, so the opportunity for greater reach is significant.
In addition, Neenz has 7,000 people following him daily on Twitter. His frequent updates keep readers engaged and thinking about Hawaii every day. The Hawaii HTA Twitter feed reaches another 1,100 people. Both resources have been highly effective at spreading the word about the Hawaii HTA social media campaign and promoting readership to its content.
I’ll take a closer look at the So Much More Hawaii media coverage using metric analysis software in future posts.
