E-Mail Marketing and Other Recession-Busting Tips

If you’ve made it this far, I’m willing to say that chances are your business is going to survive this recession. Congratulations! So much for the good news—now what?

The next step is to further strengthen your company and continue to grow sales through marketing in this still very challenging environment. Previously, in our pre-recession lives, businesspeople were often heard saying things like: “I need to get to that next level.” Very few of them could actually describe what that “next level” was but today that chant has changed to something like: “I’ve got to be able to make payroll.”

What propels businesses from the “surviving stage” to the “thriving stage” is innovation at every level of one’s business. One of the most efficient ways to do this is by using e-mail marketing. A Jupiter Research study indicates that U.S. e-mail marketing spending is projected to grow to $2.058 billion by 2012, up from $885 million in 2005.

Yet competition to penetrate e-mail inboxes is fierce according to Jordan Ayan, author of The Practical Guide to E-mail Marketing: Strategies and Tactics for Inbox Success. Ayan, who is also founder and CEO of SubscriberMail, says marketers must “break through the clutter and engage customers,” when developing an e-mail marketing campaign.

“E-mail is quickly becoming a core component of marketing strategies because it is economical and effective,” explains Ayan. “Wide adoption fueled the industry’s growth and highlights how critical it is for marketers to get it right.”

If ink, paper or equipment manufacturers are offering you very favorable deals, chances are they’re expecting business to remain soft. If the deals start to vanish, it can be interpreted to mean that a recovery is anticipated.

According to Premiere Global Services Inc., a global provider of on-demand, business-process improvement solutions (www.premiereinboxseries.com), when it comes to e-mail marketing, it is crucial that marketers identify and implement the right processes, procedures and measurements so that a successful campaign can be established. The following may seem obvious and sound simplistic but these steps will be able to point marketers in the right direction when it comes to making the most of an e-mail marketing strategy.

1. Establish Your Objectives: As with any communications program, it is important to ensure that your e-mail campaign fits in with your company’s overall marketing goals. Take the time to invest in understanding your target’s background and key characteristics to ensure there’s a clear focus on the offerings and messages that you want to communicate.

2. Define Your Target Audience: Your e-mail marketing campaign will be ineffective without proper targeting and customer segmentation. It is essential that you know and understand who your target audience is and look at the world from their point of view.

Gain further insight into your customers’ segments and what’s most relevant to them by collating demographic and psychographic data. Once that’s done, break your audience into smaller groups and then target your messages accordingly to each group based on their commonalities.

Different people respond to different messages so always remember to be as specific as possible when you identify your target segments and craft e-mail communications.

3. Build Your Message: According to Marketing Sherpa Benchmark Study 2008, e-mail readers will decide whether to open an e-mail in a fraction of a second. If it takes too long to get to the point, they won’t read the entire subject line.

If you want your e-mail messages to be read, you need to relay them in a clear, straightforward manner. Make a point to develop a message that is interesting, personal, easy to read and relevant to the recipient’s interests. Be sure to add value with each e-mail you send—by doing this, they become relevant and interesting to your prospects/clients. Always remember to write in a friendly, approachable tone and encourage quick response with click-through to your company’s Web site and eye-catching visuals.