Every advantage has to be supported with product or service
features. And one should use specific numbers instead of
generalisations. A story with a hidden message can be
placed in the email's content as well. It is also worth
repeating the most important elements of the offer and add
information about what a client can get for free.
The opinions of clients or of authorities on a given
subject, examination results to raise the importance of
arguments in favour of the offer can also be used. The
author should explicitly write if they want the recipient
to take action, but at the same time, ought to inform what
the client can get in exchange for it. The best solution
would be to offer something free of charge, for instance a
bonus coupon or access to a report inaccessible for
everyone else. Marketing specialists suggest putting
postscript in the mailing, containing the offer's summary,
alternative benefits or a bonus not advertised, which
should convince the hesitant person. The principles of
writing offers are also applied in writing persuasive
emails, however, the message should contain one to two
screens and be only a sort of introduction to the offer on
the website. The language used in the email should be
simple. The advertisement hidden in the email content has
to go through the stages of AIDA model (Attention,
Interest, Desire, Action), i.e. attract attention, raise
interest to get more information about a product and boost
the desire to have it, create or emphasise the clients'
needs, and finally, convince to take action, for instance
to make an order.
However, if the clients do not have confidence in our
brand, they will not perform any action. Confidence is
built up slowly and one cannot make recipients do something
immediately. Emails should be written in such a way to
gradually build the client's confidence in the company and
its products. This can be achieved by placing in the email
short information about the product, pictures, and
references to the Internet website with a detailed
description of the product or services.
According to Email Labs research, the more active
references to the websites (with detailed information) in
the email, the better. Each link has to be marked correctly
and stand out from the text, e.g. Read more (use bold and
underline). The text cannot be too long. It is advisable to
prepare short paragraphs with references to the website,
where the recipient could get more information.
Only after informing and building up this confidence the
author can think about persuading the clients to perform an
action, e.g. to buy the product, stressing all the time
what benefits they have. Every email has to contain
information about the sender's name, surname, email address
and company's data including the sender's telephone number
(4 to 8 lines). The summary of a Privacy Policy or at least
the Internet reference to this should be placed in the page
footer, separated from the message with, for example, a
dotted line. Moreover, at the bottom of the message there
should be information about why the email was sent to the
recipient and how one can withdraw from subscription list
in a simple way (usually by one click).
Contrary to appearances, the simpler it is to resign, the
fewer number of people actually do it. Methods for running
mailing campaigns Having prepared mailing messages and a
specified group of recipients, the mailing campaign can
begin. If our company does not have its own teleaddress
database, we can hire a company that will on our behalf
send the mailing to people whose addresses it has in its
base. And in this way, we can buy mailing to a given group
of free email account users on popular portals. To buy
email address databases in an auction or to gather them
directly from Internet websites without the users consent
is not a good solution.
If we do not know who a given email address belongs to,
what their interests or preferences are, such an address
will be of no use to us. What is more, by sending mailing
to such addresses our company can lose more than it can
gain. If we possess our own email address database of our
clients or potential clients, we will need a tool that
allows to send personalised email to a large group of
recipients. The program Outlook and the field BCC (Blind
Carbon Copy) should not be used for professional
correspondence. There shouldn't be any problem with
choosing software for mass mailing. There are programs
available on the market free of charge (under licence
freeware or open source), which can be installed on our
computers or systems made available in ASP model
(Application Service Provider), to which we can gain access
through the producer's Internet website.
The chosen solution in particular situations hinges on the
size of address databases or on mailing features (mailing
size, the number of mailing campaigns, etc.). The cost of
purchasing a mass mailing program licence should not be
higher than 200 USD. What is more, monthly subscription to
access professional email marketing systems available in
ASP model ought not to exceed 100 USD. However, those
latter systems have much more possibilities in monitoring a
mailing campaign's effectiveness. Conclusion According to
the Direct Marketing Association, the number of marketing
emails rises about 30% annually. This rise is due to low
costs and growing effectiveness of this technique of
promotion. As the latest data show, the percentage of
replies to emails also increases and is now running at a
level from 3 to 8 % and it can be higher with narrow client
segmentation. According to the latest research by the
company SARE, newsletters are gaining more and more
popularity, which are now subscribed by 90% of those
surveyed.
The way in which received messages are perceived has also
improved, as 75% of subscribers express positive opinions
about them. The preferred frequency of receiving
newsletters has also changed. Today about 1/3 want to
receive mailing even a few times a week, provided that it
is concrete, readable and that there is a possibility to
resign from it at any time (and in a simple way). The HTML
format for newsletters is preferable for the majority of
surveyed (80%), only IT department workers are in favour of
text format. Research also shows that more than half of
companies do not use electronic mail in promotion campaigns
yet, but 65% of them are to take advantage of mailing, as
today, they see benefits from applying email marketing.
Companies acknowledge the possibility of having more
contact with clients, the growing number of visits on their
website and low communication costs via electronic mail.
Therefore, if your company has not created a newsletter on
its website, it is the right time to do so. There are
plenty of programs for so called mass mailing or email
marketing on the software market, thanks to which it will
be possible to gather email addresses of potential clients
automatically and then to run a personalised mailing
campaign. Good address databases (targeted adequately)
allows you to build confidence among present and future
clients and improve the company's image, therefore,
increasing income. However, it is advisable to study the
Personal Data Protection Act and Act on Electronically
Supplied Services before starting to send mass
correspondence.
Without being familiar with those acts, the sender can
subconsciously become a spammer and will be placed on the
list of spam sources (read RBL- Relay Block List), as a
result, emails sent from your company will be deleted
immediately by software fighting against spam and will not
reach any recipients.
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This article was translated by mLingua Worldwide
Translations, Ltd. mLingua provides professional language
translations in all major Western and Asian languages,
software localization and web site translation services.
Please visit http://mlingua.pl
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