4 Ways to Build a Successful E-Mail Marketing Strategy

In a session I presented at the DMA08 annual conference and exhibition last week in Las Vegas, I provided several tips to help marketers better prepare their e-mail communication strategies. In particular, I focused on a couple of areas: the building blocks needed to get an e-mail campaign up and running, and how to make your e-mails more relevant to your customers. Here’s a rundown of what I went over.

1. Learn from tests conducted by major marketers. If you include an offer in your e-mail, for example, is it more powerful to present that offer as dollars off or a percentage discount? Changing something as minor as the color of the “Buy Now” button on a landing page from blue to red can make a difference.

2. Know how different systems will display your e-mail messages. Some may mangle your messages, rendering them completely useless. Understand what you can do to make sure this doesn’t happen. Hint: Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail present problems, but Outlook 2007 is a real challenge!

3. Gain insights into how easy it is to make your e-mails more relevant and generate sales. Marketers can recoup up to 15 percent of sales by sending e-mails to consumers who’ve abandoned shopping carts on their sites. And, when customers do place orders, send confirmation e-mails to cross-promote other products.

One company found that 15 percent of all its e-mail-generated sales resulted from this approach. Sales organizations can dynamically personalize messages from account reps to start building stronger relationships with customers.

4. The goal of any e-mail program should be to amaze and delight your customers. Techniques including simple animation, personalization and customer reviews should all be tested.

Reggie Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and e-mail marketing consultancy in Norwalk, Conn. Reach her at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net.