POSTMODERN – messaging from Boudicca

The 4 rules of e-mail marketing engagement

1. Never, ever SPAM
   Most likely you have received SPAM, or unsolicited mail at some point. You may have even considered sending an e-mail to your customers or clients telling them about your latest products and serviced and wondered – ‘am I ok to send this e-mail?’ The answer is...if they haven’t given you permission to e-mail them, it is SPAM. Not only can this get you in trouble, it can create a negative impression of your business and most importantly, it doesn’t achieve the marketing results you are looking for. You want to target interested clients and prospects.
   Do things right and your e-mail response rate will be higher, which should deliver you more traffic to you website and eventually more business.
2. Collect Addresses in a responsible manner
   Contrary to rule one, targeting a list of e-mail addresses that have opted in to receive e-mail from you works. However, there are ethical and unethical ways to collect e-mail addresses. The ethical way to collect an e-mail address is to use permission marketing techniques. The e-mail addresses you should use are those that are: Your customers/clients or prospects who have asked to be added to your list either by opting in on your website or ticking a box on a feedback form Your customers/clients who has purchased products or services from you in the past 2 years and who have indicated they would be happy to receive e-mails Customer/clients or prospects who have given you a business card, but who are ware you intend to send them e-mails Never ‘harvest’ e-mail addresses. This practice is unethical and click through rates from these types of campaigns typically achieved are less that 0.01%, in addition to damaging your business’s reputation.
3. Offer the option to unsubscribe
   Contained on all PostModern e-mail newsletter campaigns is the option for recipients to unsubscribe. Though we all hate to lost contact with a customer, client or prospect, it is better that they are receiving your e-mail because they want to. It is likely that it is just being deleted if they did not want to receive it in the first place.
4. Normal marketing rules apply
   The key to e-mail marketing is to get a positive response so, don’t forget to put a link through your website, or even better, a specific page on the site that is set up to receive clicks from your campaign. The real benefits of e-mail marketing are that it is measurable. PostModern automatically reports on every e-mail campaign you send so make sure that you can monitor this on your website too and provide every opportunity for people to contact you.As with all e-mails it is important to use good grammar and check your spelling. Check, check and check again. Once you click that send button it’s gone.Be honest in your communications. Create a Subject line that promise something of interest and then deliver it in the content of your e-mail and remember always be polite.