Comments on: Improve your Email Marketing with Outstanding Follow-Up in 2009 http://bskconsulting.com/2009/01/improve-your-email-marketing-with-outstanding-follow-up-in-2009/ Brad Kleinman...Engineer, Entrepreneur, Educator. Nice guy Tue, 31 May 2011 17:44:59 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 By: Heidi Cool http://bskconsulting.com/2009/01/improve-your-email-marketing-with-outstanding-follow-up-in-2009/comment-page-1/#comment-207 Heidi Cool Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:58:45 +0000 http://bskconsulting.com/?p=251#comment-207 Brad, These are great pre-mailing and follow-up techniques. Direct mail never stood on just one mailing alone and the same is true for e-mail. I'd also remind people that 20-40% is a great open rate. If we think back to direct snail mail, where 1% purchasing was a good response (in some industries) we remember that 1% buying often came from less than 20% opening. We couldn't track who opened the envelope, but we knew that even carefully targeted mailings often went directly to the trash. I'd add to this that we need to target our e-mail as precisely as our snail mail. Though we're not paying for postage, we may in some cases be paying for lists so we need to ensure that we're reaching the right people. Then we must also pay attention to our "from" and "subject" lines. This fall I almost pitched an e-mail send from an individual I didn't know with a subject line "Oktoberfest." For some reason I opened it anyway. It turned out that I was a member of the association hosting the event, I just couldn't tell that until I'd opened the e-mail. If the from field had not been this unknown person, but instead XYZ org, I would have known right away. The same goes for the subject line. It should have said something like "Join us for the XYX annual Oktoberfest." These fields are like the printing on an envelope, we have just a few spots to show them what the mail is about and entice them to open it. If we don't give them a hint, a reason to open, they won't. But if we take the care with our "from" and "subject" fields that we do with our email copy, it can make a world of difference. And, of course, once we get them to open the e-mail we should make sure it is <a href="http://blog.case.edu/webdev/2008/12/09/email.html" rel="nofollow">formatted correctly</a> so that everyone has a chance to read the message we've so carefully crafted. Brad,
These are great pre-mailing and follow-up techniques. Direct mail never stood on just one mailing alone and the same is true for e-mail. I’d also remind people that 20-40% is a great open rate. If we think back to direct snail mail, where 1% purchasing was a good response (in some industries) we remember that 1% buying often came from less than 20% opening. We couldn’t track who opened the envelope, but we knew that even carefully targeted mailings often went directly to the trash.

I’d add to this that we need to target our e-mail as precisely as our snail mail. Though we’re not paying for postage, we may in some cases be paying for lists so we need to ensure that we’re reaching the right people.

Then we must also pay attention to our “from” and “subject” lines.

This fall I almost pitched an e-mail send from an individual I didn’t know with a subject line “Oktoberfest.” For some reason I opened it anyway. It turned out that I was a member of the association hosting the event, I just couldn’t tell that until I’d opened the e-mail. If the from field had not been this unknown person, but instead XYZ org, I would have known right away. The same goes for the subject line. It should have said something like “Join us for the XYX annual Oktoberfest.”

These fields are like the printing on an envelope, we have just a few spots to show them what the mail is about and entice them to open it. If we don’t give them a hint, a reason to open, they won’t. But if we take the care with our “from” and “subject” fields that we do with our email copy, it can make a world of difference. And, of course, once we get them to open the e-mail we should make sure it is formatted correctly so that everyone has a chance to read the message we’ve so carefully crafted.

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