Professional e-mail shotting
Although large percentages of email flowing across the Internet are spam - unwanted messages advertising a number of questionable products and services to the unaware - a large number of
companies are using email to market their goods and services.
Which comes as no surprise as, unlike postal mail, email is both economically-priced and, when using a bulk emailing approach, can generate a healthy sales return on investment.
But it takes experience and skill to maximise the results. For starters you will need your own email database. You can use other firms’ databases, but you can forget about getting hands-on access to the
list, as the email marketing firms are wise to such tricks.
Compiling an email database is surprisingly easy, as the power of the internet can be harnessed to create your own. This is achieved by conducting competitions on your firm's website as well as capturing customer traffic as it passes through your site.
You can even conduct industry surveys using free and low-cost automated survey sites, like Survey Monkey. if you promote the survey via your website and/or press releases and offer prizes, you can capture thousands of email addresses.
You've got your email database - now what? Start using it effectively.
Most UK ISPs don't like spam and they don't like their customers generating large amounts of marketing email. If enough recipients complain, your address could be blacklisted by other ISPs,
or, perhaps worse, your domain could be black holed by organisations such as Spamhaus which police the Net for unwanted emails.
Getting on an email blacklist or black hole database is easy. Getting off is a nightmare, so it's essential to use low-cost email ISPs such as Mail.com or UK2Net, which will allow you to generate large
swathes of marketing emails via their servers in return for a few pounds.
If your email address on their service gets blacklisted or black holed - no problem, just register and buy another monthly low-cost subscription and cancel the original(s).
You can use bulk email packages or services like Strongmail to drill nto the database and generate the necessary messages, but do not forget that you can use powerful Web resources such as Google Adwords and Google Analytics to audit and analyse the results of your mail shots.
Google Adwords is a pay-for advertising program that Google runs alongside its free-to-use search engine. You register your advertising words and Google promotes them. This can help to drive traffic to your company site, but its by-product, Google Analytics, is the jewel in the crown for email marketeers.
By placing a small piece of HTML code in each of your Web pages, Google monitors the traffic hitting that page, where it's from and which ISP, etc., and, in many cases, the origin email address.
By routing different email marketing campaigns to different landing pages on your company’s website, you can use Google Analytics to analyse the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. Even better it's free to use, providing you load a few pounds to set up an Adwords account.
Back at the email coal face, meanwhile, remember not to bombard your customers with too-frequent emails - customers generally don't want daily emails cluttering their inbox.
A successful email campaign does not have a distinct formula or structure, but rather a mix of differing elements all dependent on what is being promoted and to whom.
The 'to whom' element of this statement is one which requires careful attention. It is important to ensure the right email gets into the hands of the right recipient.
For more information, why not read the following guides;
Promoting your business using email
By Steve Gold, News Editor
