Can You Use Email to Market Your Home Business?
Part I Part II
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What’s In This Book
Short
answer: everything you need to know to do effective email marketing. You’ll
receive guidance on issues ranging from
creative to analytics to legal. Also here: real-life examples of
good email marketing, templates, spreadsheets and information on free
resources to help you achieve email marketing success.
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Chapter 1 focuses on the benefits of email marketing, including my own “Top Ten Reasons to Love Email.” You’ll gain an understanding of how email marketing has become one of the fastest growing segments of the marketing pie for organizations in a wide variety of industries. Email marketing levels the playing field and offers as many advantages to small companies as it does to large ones. The chapter ends with a case study about a small company that is generating $13 in revenue from each $1 they spend on their email marketing – and tips to help you do the same.
Email is a channel, a way to deliver content. Read Chapter 2 and you’ll learn about eight very different types of emails you can develop, based on your business goals and your resources. While many people think of messages that are purely promotional when they think of email marketing, some of the best email marketing out there is a mix of promotional and non-promotional content. Also covered here are auto-responders and other types of “triggered” email campaigns.
Chapter 3 is all about strategy, which is the key to using email effectively. You’ll walk through the process of developing an email strategy, from competitive analysis to content to qualitative and quantitative goals. Developing a strategy is a bit like riding a bike – it’s easier to teach someone to ride a bike than it is to explain to someone how to ride a bike. To help you get up to speed quickly this chapter is written as a “case study” – with specific examples for each of the concepts presented which culminate in a complete strategic plan for a fictional organization.
One of the biggest challenges you’ll face is growing your own in-house email list, called “acquisition.” Chapter 4 presents the benefits of building your own list, as well as outlining the business case for opt-in. You’ll learn about the best ways, online and offline, to grow your list without spending a fortune; you’ll also be introduced to acquisition methods which aren’t permission-based, which you should avoid at all costs. Also here: tips for creating and optimizing an email opt-in for your Website, which is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your email list.
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Chapter 5 gives you creative guidelines for
email, including writing copy, designing HTML and using from and subject
lines effectively. The focus is on the “prime real estate” in every email – the
portions that appear in the preview pane and “above the fold.” Good creative can
dramatically improve response to your emails; you’ll find the troubleshooting
guide, with typical weaknesses and their creative fixes, one of the most useful
parts of this book. There’s also a case study highlighting a small, inexpensive
change that resulted in a 50% lift in click-through rates on one email
newsletter – and it’s something you can implement today with just a little bit
of time and no additional cost.
Deliverability, or getting your email delivered to your recipients’ inboxes, is another challenge you’ll face, but it’s not insurmountable. A recent study found that on average 22.0% of legitimate email messages were being mistaken for spam; that’s one in five emails sent. Read Chapter 6 and you’ll gain an understanding of the issues surrounding deliverability as well as tools you can use to make sure your email gets to the inbox. Also here: what to do if you find that your email is being filtered as spam.
Chapter 7 covers tracking and reporting, one of the truest and most underutilized benefits of marketing with email. You’ll get a quick overview of fifteen key metrics and how to calculate them, including bottom-line conversion metrics like return-on-investment and click-to-purchase ratio. You’ll also learn about performance-based metrics, including bounces, opens and click-through rate. After you’ve completed this chapter you’ll know all there is to know about each metric – and how they work together to provide you valuable feedback on your campaigns.
Email is good for getting new customers but it’s even better at building relationship with existing customers to keep them as clients; you’ll get a detailed understanding of this in Chapter 8. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a buzzword today; you can spend a good chunk of your budget on a fancy software package to help you. Read this chapter and learn how email can deliver similar results with a much smaller investment. Whether you’re looking to shepherd a prospect through a long sales cycle, up sell customers on additional products or increase the renewal rates on your product or service, email can be an important tool in your arsenal.
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Chapter 9 teaches you how to leverage email as a viral marketing tool –
to get your customers and prospects to become advocates for your product or
service by forwarding your email messages to their friends or colleagues. You’ll
learn the ropes by reading about successful viral initiatives by Hotmail, Burger
King and others. Also here: examples of viral marketing creative and
quantitative activity, to help you develop your own viral campaigns.
While it’s best to use your own email list, there are times when you may want or need to rent someone else’s email list. In Chapter 10 you’ll learn where to look for third-party lists, what information to request and how to evaluate what you receive. You’ll find the going rates for business and consumer email lists, get tips for testing samples of third party lists and learn what to do if the list doesn’t perform as you expected.
Chapter 11 covers the legal side of email. As this book goes to press, there are twenty-six countries with dedicated email/anti-spam legislation in place and nine others considering it; another eighteen have incorporated email/anti-spam protection into existing regulations. Many require “affirmative consent” or an opt-in; in Italy you can face up to three years in jail for sending email that doesn’t comply with their strict guidelines. Read this Chapter and its related appendix to get an overview of the laws and regulations in most countries around the world, along with links to additional resources you can use to keep up with this fast-changing area of the law. Also here: some best practices you can follow which should keep you on the right side of any current or future laws regarding email.
The end of this book is really a beginning – the start of an era of improved email marketing for you or your clients. In Chapter 12 you’ll review the basic principles of this book and gain a framework for developing or expanding your email initiatives. It’s great to read about email marketing, but the only way you’re really going to get good at it is by doing. You’ll also find links to seven of my favorite resources, most of them free, that you can use to keep up on the latest in the ever-evolving world of email marketing.
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