Thursday, November 1, 2012

How to Have a Successful Mass-Mailer Campaign


Having a successful mass mailer campaign is not as simple a task as it sounds. Somebody new to online marketing might think it is a simple as uploading email addresses into a database and clicking the send button, unfortunately it is not. Even for the most hardened marketer mass mailer campaigns can be worse than a root channel or a high colonic. Luckily we have compiled a list of great tips to keep mass-mailing as simple as a walk in the park

1 Be honest and direct about what your are doing or selling.
It doesn't matter if you are pushing over-seas medications, how to make money online, or Binary Options. If you are misleading or indirect about what you are selling your email campaign will always fall very far from successful.
If you are not clear about what your product is, how it works, or what you offer, the few people that open your email and sign up will not convert. Nothing is worse for a salesperson than to call a lead only to find that they have no idea what your talking about or what they signed up for. If you are interested in buying apples and somebody called you about lemons you would confused as well. And confused phone calls very rarely lead to deposits.
This does not mean you need to over load them with information in your email, the best emails are usually two sentences or paragraphs at most.

2.       Clean your contact list
A  email list that is cleaned and sorted is a powerful tool. It does not matter if your list was generated organically or pulled from some other source, sending mail to misspelled addresses, uninterested or actively antagonistic parties is likely to get you black-listed.
To solve this problem just do a Google search for "email validation service". This service can be relatively cheap, easy and is well worth the investment.

A great way to to keep your list clean is to offer people double opt-in (where the subscriber requests — then confirms the request — of your marketing message). This will significantly increase your response rates and help keep your mailer out of the dreaded spam folder.

3.     Triple check your message
For some people (myself included) spelling mistakes and typos are the bane of existence. Nobody cares when everything is written perfect, all the i’s dotted the t’s crossed, but when you make  a mistake everybody will think your are scam. It doesn’t matter if it is a big mistake or a little one, people will notice and they will be turned off from your product.
Luckily there is a simple solution for this, its called spell-check, and though it will not fix all your mistakes, it is a great start. The next thing you can do is read and re-read your email aloud. You will be amazing how much more effective this is than reading in your head.
Even better for five dollars you can hire somebody on Fiverr to proof and edit your work.

4.       Manage your failed emails and unsubscribed
If you do not remove the failed emails or people who have unsubscribe from your bulk-mailer, you will have an extreme negative effect on both your short term and long term open rates. Yahoo, Hotmail and Google regularly convert abandoned email accounts into spamtraps, which will in-turn automatically categorize your e-mails as unsolicited and spam.
Also be cautious about continuing to email people who do not want your spam. Irate individuals have been known to sue people for sending them unwanted emails, sometimes hitting companies for up to 2 million dollars. Not to mention trolls who will find any opportunity to complain about you, your, product, or your website. This could cost you significantly in the long run.

5.       Build trust with your subscribers
90% of a mass email marketing campaign’s success comes down to effectively establishing and maintaining your subscribers’ trust.
Don’t surprise your subscribers’ expectations with radically altered content, don’t wear out your welcome with a ton of low quality content, and most of all, and don’t mistreat your loyal supporters with dishonesty.
Provide quality and useful information and your readers will respond. Your clicks will be more frequent and your subscriber base will grow instead of shrink. This will greatly increase the value of your contact list and instead of finding that your emails end up in the spambox you will see that they are being opened, read and, recommended.

6. Watch you mailers metrics
If you are using a half-way decent mailer service such as GetResponse, you will have a plethora of ways to track your mailers and how well they do. You can see open rates, read through rates, clicks, unsubscribes, anything you can want.
Not to mention you can do split-tests, this gives you the ability to test the effectiveness of an email with a direct comparison to another email.

Often much of this data will be useless and unnecessary, but being able to directly see the success of what your sending is extremely useful.

And while we’re on the subject, make sure you’re checking your metrics after every send. Metrics are the lifeline that tells you whether your campaigns are working or not. Delivery rates, hard and soft bounces and unsubscribes will give you much needed insight into your campaign’s ROI. Failure to check them — and failure to act on the results — is the quickest way to rob your campaign of momentum.

1 comment: