I came across a very interesting study on eMarketer recently.  It was conducted in April 2010 and the aim was to find out what communication methods consumers prefer – and why.

It looks particularly at email, Facebook and Twitter.  Interestingly, the study found that customers mostly tend to prefer receiving emails from businesses and brands, and that those who interact with them through Facebook or Twitter are more than likely already signed up for their email newsletters.

Why is that – and why do your customers want three different channels of communication with your brand? 
As this study proved, people expect different types of communication through different channels.  Different networks thus have different audiences and messages should be customised accordingly.

Email

Email builds and maintains relationships with existing customers.  It’s informative, direct and targeted, rather than just a generic message directed at the masses.  (At least, that’s what customers have come to expect, so remember to segment and target your lists!)
 
Facebook
Facebook fans tend to be from a younger demographic.  By liking your business on Facebook they’re showing their support publicly.  Entertainment and active interaction are the most common reasons for users joining your Facebook group or page – conversational and interesting posts tend to get a good response.

Twitter
Twitter  users tend to be very active online.  They want to be constantly up to date, making it a great channel to give constant updates on new developments or current happenings. 

It seems that even your social network fans like receiving your email newsletters, in fact, they’re the ones most likely to sign up to your newsletters.  Good to know.  Why not add a newsletter subscription form to your Facebook page then? Find out how here. 

What makes email marketing an effective mass communication tool? What makes it a successful marketing platform for businesses?

I’ve identified what I think are the three most important advantages email has over other marketing communication strategies.

#1 - Email is personal
Email is by nature a very personal medium.  As online interaction expands through social networking, blogging, online shopping and banking, your email address starts to form of part of your identity online.

In your inbox you have the power to decide whether or not to read a particular email, whether you want to report a sender as SPAM, and whose mailings you want to remain subscribed to.  Your inbox is a trusted zone where you are in charge.  So when your email shows up in your subscribers’ inboxes you’re already in a privileged space – treat your subscribers to quality newsletters and you’ll manage to grow the relationship.

Simply by subscribing to your newsletter your readers have indicated an interest in what you have to offer.  Unlike social networks where you simply broadcast generalized messages to the masses, email marketing gives you access to a more receptive audience –thereby increasing the likelihood that they’ll become valued customers. 
Most of all, email is private, giving you the opportunity to grow a relationship with your recipient, especially if you give them somewhere to direct their replies.

#2 - You can track your campaigns
Unlike most other marketing tools, email is easily tracked.  This means you always know whether or not your campaigns are performing as you’d like them to.  Of course certain things, like building brand recognition, are never entirely trackable – but in terms of list growth, traffic generated and sales converted you can monitor regularly.

Being able to monitor the campaign’s performance enables you to hone your email campaigns to deliver the desired results.

#3-Your campaigns are exclusive
Your email newsletters are a chance to reward your most loyal followers.

When you send targeted mailings to a segmented list, your recipients get relevant, valuable information; when you notify them of specials or offer them exclusive discounts, it motivates other potential clients to join your mailing list.  An excellent example is Kulula’s newsletter campaign.  Only those on their mailing list know on what days they host their one-day-only sales – it’s an excellent reason to sign up for their mailing list, but it also means that – because I’m always aware of their specials and are constantly reminded of them by their regular emails – I’m more likely to search Kulula’s site for flights before looking at their competitors.

Build a quality, rewarding campaign (one from which your subscribers benefit) and you’re likely to get good word of mouth: they might just share your newsletter with their contacts, thereby expanding your audience.

Keep these three factors in mind when creating your campaigns and use them to your business’ advantage.

I have a lot to say about what to do in your email marketing campaigns – tips, best practices, that kind of thing - but I thought it might be a good idea to share with you some of the biggest mistakes I find our clients making in their campaigns.

1.    Neglecting to manage your mailing list

Ensuring that your mailing list is always up to date is vital for a healthy campaign.  Sending to outdated email addresses waves a red flag at spam filters, so it’s important to make sure that you regularly remind your subscribers to update their profile.

It’s surprising how many email marketers simply don’t delete unsubscribes from their mailing list!  Not only is that illegal, but it disrespects the subscriber’s request.  Why not stay on good footing with those unsubscribers?  There’s always a chance that they might subscribe again at a later date.  Perhaps they signed up for your real estate emails because they were in the market – then they found the perfect nest through you and unsubscribed as they no longer need to receive your emails.  That doesn’t mean they won’t be moving again in a few years…  Make use of our automated mailing list management tools to ensure that unsubscribes are removed from your mailing list and spam complaints are added to your block list.

2.     Not sending targeted, relevant emails

As I pointed out last week, relevancy is one of the make-or-break elements of your campaign.  If your content isnt’ relevant to your subscribers, they won’t read your emails, won’t click on your links and will, eventually, unsubscribe.  According to this chart by Emarketer, 55% of email recipients said their reason for not opening marketing emails was because the content didn’t interest them.  (The survey is about how subscribers respond better to targeted emails, so it’s worth your while to have a look.)

Targeted sends mean the content is more relevant to the person receiving the email, making it much more likely that they’ll follow your call to action – whether it’s clicking through to your site or donating to your cause.  How to target your list?  Segmentation and automated responses (TriggerMail).  To find out how, read this article recently posted on our US blog on how one company increased their email generated revenue by 322%, simply through segmenting their mailing list, and this one on how you can implement TriggerMail to target your sends.

3.    Overlooking the importance of testing

Subscribers are a whimsical bunch; their preferences and topical interests are constantly changing.  Your email campaign needs to evolve with them, or you’ll risk becoming irrelevant (I won’t bore you by repeating myself – see point 1!).  Using our A/B split testing tool gives you the ability to constantly test how variations of different campaigns perform against each other.  Test with a clear objective in mind:  If you want to see how recipients respond to longer or shorter subject lines, or a subject line that contains your brand name against one that doesn’t, test it.  You can test longer versus shorter newsletters, one that contains more or fewer  images, or even test different placements for your logo. 

Testing ensures that you send out only the most effective newsletters with every send.

4.     Not considering timing

Some days are proven to yield higher open and click-through rates than others.  There’s no point in sending out a newsletter late on a Friday afternoon when most of your subscribers have already knocked off for the weekend.  Midweek (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) are generally considered the best sending times, but this might differ depending on your business.  I’ve given more tips on send times a previous article, but the most important thing to keep in mind (as always) is the subscriber.  What time best suits them?  When will they be most likely to sit back with a cup of coffee and read your email – and when are they likely to be most responsive?  If you’re trying to get them to make a purchase, why are you sending a week before pay day?

5.    Disregarding social media

I’ve written a lot this year about the rise of social media – and you’ve probably noticed the social versus email debate.  The general consensus is that social media, when implemented properly, can complement your email marketing very well.  Email is more personal, but social has the ability to expand your audience drastically.  It’s time to make use of this quality to grow your email marketing reach.  Add social widgets and forward to a friend links to your footer and make use of our new social share tool which allows you to share your newsletter with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.

Some of these may seem obvious or clichéd, but unfortunately that’s because these mistakes happen.  I suspect it’s because often clients think that these measures are difficult to implement, or that it doesn’t apply to them.  GraphicMail offers you the tools you need to avoid these mistakes at no extra charge.  They’re part of the service we provide and without fail they’re easy to use. 

I’ve used the phrase “social media is the new buzz word for 2010” (or some derivative thereof) countless times recently, but something tells me there are many of you out there who either don’t know what I’m talking about, or simply aren’t convinced - which is why I was so excited to read Chris Moerdyk of Bizcommunity’s article yesterday. 

He reviews Socialnomics, a book by Erik Qualman, and summarises some of the important facts about the development of social media.  Moerdyk lists 41 interesting tidbits from Qualman’s book – and some of these made me think:

If Facebook gets more traffic on a weekly basis than Google in the US and YouTube has become the second largest online search engine, then your customers are more likely to find your product on a social site like Facebook or YouTube than on Google. So what happens if they can’t find your product in their social media searches?

Social media is the online version of what is traditionally referred to as “word of mouth”: Qualman states that “78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust advertisements”. So what happens when their peers aren’t recommending you through word of mouth (social media)?

Social search has become the new online phenomenon: Search engines now give preference to companies based on their social mentions.  (Our Head of Marketing wrote a very interesting article on this for Bizcommunity earlier this week.)  According to Qualman we will, in future, “no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.” So what happens when you don’t have a social media presence?

While I know our US clients can see these effects of social media in their business communities every day, in South Africa we (unfortunately) do not enjoy the same level of connectivity as our US counterparts and therefore also aren’t as exposed to online social content.  That doesn’t mean that the effects of social media aren’t reaching us here, or that the effects of social media won’t continue to snowball in our own business environment.  Many local businesses are already very active on Facebook running profiles, fan pages and groups – and the hype is slowly expanding to Twitter too.

A perfect example:  I hadn’t hear of the book Socialnomics until reading the article on Bizcommunity, but after reading it I found a blog and YouTube videos by the author, promoting his book.  There was so much information, and so much to convince me that the book must contain some interesting facts, that I’m recommending it to our blog followers the very next day. 
And that’s how online word of mouth works.

But what does this have to do with email marketing?

GraphicMail has been rolling out new ways of integrating social media with your email marketing – we want to assist you and your business to be prepared for this next wave of online expansion.  Last year we enabled you to place social widgets in your email footer so your subscribers can share your newsletters through their social network accounts - recently we’ve even added a new social widget reporting tool.  (It allows you to track who shared what, who they shared it with and through which network.)  Finally, we announced the release of our new social share feature in our newsletter two days ago!  I’ll be publishing a blog article tomorrow to explain the features of this exciting new tool, don’t miss it!

Now:  If social media is this powerful, imagine what you can do with the combined powers of email marketing and social media…