Known as ‘CRM’, Customer Relationship Management is the “Establishment, development, maintenance and optimisation of long-term mutually valuable relationships between customers and organisations” (Rospigliosi, A, 2017). With the aim to Acquire, retain and extend customers relationships. E-mail marketing plays its role within CRM very well and is also very effective.
“E-mail has become an important part of companies’ marketing mix and is considered as the most successful form of communication technology, carrying the potential to boost marketing success and to improve the brand image” (Tezinde et al., 2002).
STAT ALERT !!!!
“94% of interest users are on emails, only 61% of those are on social media” (Ward, S. 2017)
STAT ALERT !!!!
“75% of adult online users say that email marketing is their preferred marketing method” (Ward, S. 2017)
Let’s look at the benefits and risks with an overview of different ways you can use this channel effectively for your online retail business. Included are tips and tricks to sending the right e-mails to the right customers.
If you follow the simples rules to e-mail marketing, the success rate is high and you will not be left disappointed.
Benefits of using E-mail for your marketing campaign
Attracting new customers is difficult, however it is definetely better to know whether you are succeding or not, rather than go in blind folded.
With the use of analytics one can track the progress of their campaign fairly easily.
So what are the things you can track?……
- Bounce rate
- Delivery rate
- Call to action with A/B Testing
- Conversion rate
The core analytics to keep an eye on are these….
- Bounce rate
- Delivery rate
- Call to action
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
There are 2 types of bounced emails,
‘soft bounce’ which means that the recipients inbox is full or there is something wrong with the server, eventually once the issue is rectified the email will be delivered.
A ‘hard bounce’ on the other hand is worse, and it means there is either something wrong with the emailing list or the email itself.
http://www.impactbnd.com/email-marketing-analytics-the-core-4-most-important-metrics/
2. Delivery rate
This is achieved by calculating the ‘send rate – bounce rate = delivery’
Click here to read about mailbox providers
3. Call to action
The online retail sector is a haven for it. This is your chance to be creative and have some fun with your emails, with endless ways to capture your audiences attention, its all about including urgency, prices, deals and value in your emails. Don’t forget to make it visually appealing.
(ASOS) E-mail example
If you are looking for some tips to create stunning and catchy emails, use this link below.
4. Conversion rate
“Conversion rate is probably one of the most important email marketing analytics for your business to track. This is the rate of how many people completed a certain action that you want them to. You absolutely need to track this metric.” (Baum, D. 2012)
Click here to see how to improve email deliverability
Personalise and segment your emails
For an online retail business this is very important, as with the amount of variety of stock and variety of customers, you can target specifically to their needs, for example, targeting the demographics by, age, previous purchases, previous clicks and birthdays.
The formatting possibilities
You should make the most of the formatting possibilities available in sending e-mails. Emails can be very interactive and engaging if you followed the right steps in reaching the right customers, who are willing to browse the email and access the content.
E-mail messages have a much wider range of formatting possibilities than social media messages.
20% off (Blacks)
Welcome e-mail (ASOS)
The images above are examples taken from real emails to show the way you can use e-mails to attract attention.
Risks of using E-mail
- Engagement
- Spam filters
- E-mail list
- Sender reputation value
Engagement!!!!
Engagement is important because once you have acquired new customers the new objective is to retain their attention and by doing that you will build your online retail empire.
The risk is that you will drop off on creativeness and not manage your campaign adequately to your customers needs. If the customer has subscribed it means they were insterested in your products or services, however the emails need constant tweeking, for, appearance, text and information, as the viewer does not want to see the same thing week in week out.
Spam filters
People get waves of emails everyday and due to this imporvement in spam filters, if the server sees its a bulk distributed email, it may well end up in the receivers spam inbox
E-mail list
In order to distribute and have a successful e-mail marketing campaign its necessary to have an e-mailing list, the way to do this is by getting people to subscribe to them and this way you are getting their permission for you to send them these e-mails.
Without forgetting to include and opt-out which allows the person to stop receiving these emails.
Sender reputation value
A poor sender reputation may put your company at risk of going out of business. “Every ISP now attributes a Sender Reputation value to any organisation generating high volumes of emails – a low score will result in emails automatically being deemed spam, arriving at best in the recipient’s spam folder, at worst, being discarded.” (Paterson, J. 2014)
In order to avoid complications in the long term, you should manage your sender reputation regularly and ensure that the value is not low.
“The Sender Reputation score – which ranges from 0 to 100 – is based on bounce rate, the number of people that flag the email as spam, and the number that unsubscribe. (Paterson, J. 2014)
Click here for more information about reputation
So…… as an online retail business, What are the best e-mails to send?
- Product updates
- (Thank-You) An automated email which triggers when someone subscribes
- Welcome e-mails
- Dedicated e-mails
By remembering what you have learn’t in this blog using this tutorial should be even easier now. Mail-chimp offer an easy step by step guide to setting yourself up with E-mail marketing.
Bibliography
Baum, D. (2012). Email Marketing Analytics: The Core 4 Most Important Metrics. [online] Impactbnd.com. Available at: https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/email-marketing-analytics-the-core-4-most-important-metrics [Accessed 3 Jan. 2018].
Bonini, J. (2013). Design Tips for Creating Calls-to-Action that Pop Off the Page. [online] Impactbnd.com. Available at: https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/design-tips-for-creating-calls-to-action-that-pop-off-the-page [Accessed 3 Jan. 2018].
MailChimp. (2018). Marketing Automation – Sell More Stuff | MailChimp. [online] Available at: https://mailchimp.com/?awid=73980894&awag=31581523097&awad=213163441148&awkw=mailchimp.&pid=GAW&source=website&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyeuv5om82AIVzpztCh1h_QqxEAAYASAAEgJL-fD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CKnOiOiJvNgCFZUR0wodCtUAPQ [Accessed 3 Jan. 2018].
Paterson, J. (2014). Email marketing: Explaining the power – and risk – of reputation building. [online] MyCustomer. Available at: https://www.mycustomer.com/marketing/technology/email-marketing-explaining-the-power-and-risk-of-reputation-building [Accessed 3 Jan. 2018].
Rospigliosi, A. (2017). E-mail CRM.
SparkPost. (2015). 17 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability Today. [online] Available at: https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/improve-email-deliverability/ [Accessed 3 Jan. 2018].
Stafford, J. (2015). MailChimp Tutorial | Email Marketing Best Practices.Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dON65hu7C1A [Accessed 3 Jan. 2018].
Tezinde, T., Smith, B. and Murphy, J. (2002), “Getting permission: exploring factors affecting permission marketing”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 28-36.
Vaughan Reimers, Chih-Wei Chao, Sarah Gorman, (2016) “Permission email marketing and its influence on online shopping”, Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 28 Issue: 2, pp.308-322
VerticalResponse. (2018). Mailbox Providers and Best Practices. [online] Available at: http://www.verticalresponse.com/partner/resources/article/mailbox-providers-and-best-practices [Accessed 3 Jan. 2018].
Ward, S. (2017). Why Email Marketing Is Still the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread for Business. [online] The Balance. Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/email-marketing-2948346 [Accessed 3 Jan. 2018].