Email Marketing

5 commonly asked questions

Email marketing is a very powerful marketing tool. It's targeted, extremely cost effective and it works!

Our CRM (customer relationship management) system is simply to use. In fact, we'll have you sending your first email campaign in ten minutes.

We believe in making our services accessible. Ask us questions, we'll give you straight answers without the jargon. Here are some questions we encounter a lot, but if you have any others, just ask.

1. What is key to a successful email marketing campaign?

In a word, relevance. Try to give your readers information or offers that are of value to them. You won't always get it right, but the last thing you want to do is continually blast your clients with irrelevant emails.

Why? Because if you do, they will quit reading your emails. It is tempting to send out lots of emails as it doesn't cost a lot and you will almost always get some response, but our advice is to ask the same question of every email you send - is it relevant or valuable to the reader?

2. What is the best time to send email campaigns?

Most emails campaigns are sent between 10 and 12 in the morning and 2 and 5 in the afternoon. These are generally accepted as the best times.

However, it is really simple to see what works with your client database. You simply test it out. Send emails at different times and check out your opening rates, it only takes the click of a button to find out. You will soon discover what works for you.

3. What's the difference between an opening rate and a click-through-rate?

An opening rate is how many people open your email. The click-through-rate refers to how many people who open your email 'click through' to the offer or link in your email. Again, testing will be invaluable. See what's popular and what's not. Fine-tune your offers accordingly.

Email marketing is fantastic in that you get results in real time, no guess work required!

4. How do I avoid my email being sent to spam?

Our CRM has a spam scorer built in. You simply check the box and the system will tell you your score - it needs to be under 5. It will also tell you what the issues are, things like words you've used that will be read as spam and what score they've given you. That way you can change anything that's problematic before you send.

Again, no guess work required!

5. What's a good opening rate?

Opening rates vary, and as we've already said, the more relevant your email the better your opening rate will be. In general, an opening rate of 15 - 20% is considered very good. Keep an eye on what scores well and what doesn't. Look at the subject lines you write. With a bit of tweaking you may get a much better result.