arpReach Team

Last year it was reported that UK consumers spent £810m on online purchases alone during Black Friday, and a further £720m three days later on Cyber Monday.

This year, Experian-IMRG expects online sales during the 24-hour period to surpass £1bn for the first time in UK history.

The Centre for Retail Research estimates online spending on Black Friday to be closer to £966m, with total Black Friday sales reaching £1.39bn and shopping over the entire weekend nearing £3.5bn.

In the US, it is predicted that e-commerce sales on Black Friday will reach $2.7 billion this year, up 12.5% from $2.4 billion last year.

But with so many consumers looking for a bargain and so many businesses fighting for a sale how do you get noticed?

The answer is if you haven’t done so already then start your marketing campaign NOW!

With predicted spend hitting an all time high this is a valuable opportunity to get early pre Xmas sales in.

You need to be the brand/business that first comes to mind when consumers hit their devices at 12:01am Friday 27th November!

Make sure that your content is enticing but not a full giveaway, after all you want the consumer to come back to your site on the day to make their purchase.

So what are you waiting for? Start sending your email sequences out offering a taster of what they can expect on the day.

arpReach is ideally suited to handle scheduled email sequences, so plan your strategy, segment your data, set up the content, schedule and off you go !

For more info head over to www.arpreach.com

 

 

In part one of ‘what you need to know when running email marketing campaigns’ we covered looking after your data.

This post sets out to detail ways in which you can influence whether your email gets noticed!

1. Design

There are several elements to consider when designing your email. First and most importantly, in design terms, does it reflect your brand?

In a multi-media age branding has become more important than ever. You need your customer to instantly recognise you whether on social media, on your website or through your email communication. Branding is about building trust and being the company of at the top of the list when the need arises.

Once you have considered your brand then you need to make sure that the structure makes sense. If the email doesn’t flow or navigate well the user will quickly loose interest and hit delete!

A couple of top tips to think about:

• Make sure that your ‘from’ name is your company name (again reinforcing the brand)
• Consider your subject line, you only have a few seconds to grab attention. That said make sure it makes sense to the main message of the email.
• Put the important message or CTA at the top.
• If you are including a top nav bar, make sure this reflects your website.

2. Test and test again!

Don’t forget to test your email thoroughly, paying particular attention to checking links and images.

If links don’t work you will not only loose instant engagement but you might find an increase in your unsubscribes too.

3. How your email renders across email clients

HTML emails, particularly those with a lot of formatting and images, will render differently in every email client. This is a common issue and one that you have little control over.

However you can do a couple of things to help:

• If you are able to identify your top 2 or 3 most used client by your contact list. Then design and test to those clients and compromise where you need to.
• Reduce your formatting – If you are having a real issue with the way that your email is rendering then simplify the formatting. Ensure its one column for example.

4. More tests!

One of the great things about email is that you can test and respond to the results both quickly and cost effectively.

With email you should be split testing something with every communication. This way you will get to know your contacts and start to deliver them what they want to see, this ultimately lifts the response rate.

Some elements you may want to test include:

• Subject lines
• Personalisation
• Offers
• Dynamic content
• Deployment date or time
• Segmenting lists

5. Define your proposition before you start creating your email

Be clear from the outset what the main aim of the email is. With no real limit to the length of your email it is easy to fall into the trap of talking about everything.

It is better to send more regular, short and relevant emails than try and sell everything all at once.

So your goal may be to establish a relationship with your brand or you could be purely focused on generating visitors to your website.

Whatever you decide, ensure that you give your subscribers a clear reason to open your email.

6. Segmenting lists

Successful email marketing is communication to your contacts that is both regular and more importantly RELEVANT!

The more that you can segment and target your database the more responsive it will be.

For example if you were running an email campaign for an online training course you would think about the personal journey of that contact.

• You have attracted the user to be interested in your course
• Over the course of several emails they have signed up and attended
• Any future correspondence now needs to reflect that they have had your training and now may require advanced or alternative training. You also need to write these emails acknowledging their now greater knowledge.

This is a very obvious contact journey to illustrate the importance of knowing your database, segmenting and offering content relevant to that person. Each business will have its own changing demographics so take some time to consider these before you plan your email strategy.

arpReach handles segmentation with ease as it was developed with the need of individual customers in mind. You can set up auto responders that will automatically go on the journey with the contact, moving them onto different data segments as responses move them along. You can find out more arpReach:

7. Personalisation works

If you are capturing email addresses ensure that you add first name and last name to the form then test personalisation in different ways:

• First name V’s salutation and last name
• Include the first name within subject line
• Test using the name throughout the message, not just Dear John
• Think about dynamic content and images based on your knowledge of your contact.
  

8. Be prepared for mobile devices

As you you will be aware we are all more connected than ever and available to communication 24/7.

In fact 67.2% of consumers use a smartphone to check their email

(ref: http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics)

Therefore test your email on mobile and ensure that it is clear, well formatted as well as easy to read and navigate.

9. Email as part of your overall marketing strategy

Email marketing works best when part of an overall marketing strategy, both digital and traditional.

In many ways it comes down to the reference in point 1. In a multi-channel age you need your brand to be across the marketing channels to build trust and recognition in your brand.

10. Don’t forget to keep working on your contact database

The points above all focus on your existing database and ways on which to communicate for the best results.

However along with this you need to consider how you continue to attract contacts into your email database. A few to consider could be:

• Email sign up on your website
• Promote your email sign up via social media
• PPC targeted to sign up landing pages
• Online banner advertising
• Recommendation and referral through your existing database
• Competitions
• Offline via events and exhibitions

Once you have planned your marketing strategy you need an email marketing solution that you can trust to deliver your message.

arpReach are experts in auto-responders and email marketing and are already the choice for thousands of internet marketers.

Visit our site to find out more about its marketing leading features www.arpreach.com

Email marketing and automation is still one of the most cost effective marketing tools available to promote your business or service.

In fact 73% of marketers agree that email marketing is core to their business.

However you need to make sure that you handle the planning and protection of data well otherwise you could lose customers, trust and sales.

Worse still you could find yourself with problems with your ISP or in breach of data protection laws.

So part one of ‘what you need to know when running email marketing campaigns’ we cover what you need to know about looking after your data.

1. Permission

Make sure you have permission from the person that you wish to add as a contact before you start to send communications.

Ideally make this a two-stage opt-in process so that the contact has to confirm the sign up/registration before it is added to your contact database.

2. Keep your lists clean

Contacts move email addresses or just stop using addresses at a surprisingly high rate. Therefore you need to keep your list clean by asking subscribers if they would like to continue to receive your communication. Or better still use an email verification service to regularly check their validity.

arpReach will be launching a new email verification service early next month, watch this space for more details.

3. Manage your sender reputation

MarketingProfs state that last year 122,500,453,020 emails were sent every hour.

This figure is only set to increase, and with that so do the ISPs reaction to what they perceive could be spam.

If your data is not clean, and you are sending high volumes at high frequency there is a chance that your ISP will start to block your emails, meaning that they won’t get to their intended destination.

These following 5 points could help you avoid being blacklisted by your ISP:

• Regularly verify your email database.
• Honour unsubscribe requests.
• Monitor, resolve and learn from any spam complaints.
• Deliver relevant content will minimise spam complaints.
• Use a double opt-in process and unique IP address.

4. Be prepared for churn

A good email marketing campaign will be targeted and relevant and so should keep your contacts engaged.

However your contacts change in their needs and interests so be prepared to keep adding and replacing using retention and acquisition programs.

This is ideally suited to the arpReach automation process. You can set up your online forms and landing pages, plan you autoresponder sequence and content, then let it run! See more info here.

5. Focus on list quality not quantity!

Growing your list is important to increase sales and exposure. However there is no point adding bad or irrelevant contacts. This will be detrimental and will simply reduce your response and conversion rate.

Focus on building good quality data and then targeting that contact with relevant information.

Everything within the arpReach system centres on the contact and their list memberships, meaning that you can target effectively. You can see more information here.

6. Use the opt-in process to establish and build trust

As a contact is at the point of requesting to opt in to your email list they are putting trust in you and your brand. Asking key and relevant questions at this point can help build the trust that you are not going to inundate them with irrelevant emails.

So for example you may want to ask their level of knowledge on a subject e.g. would you consider yourself a beginner, intermediate or expert internet marketer?

This way the subsequent emails can be relevant to the knowledge base of the subscriber.

However, think these questions through carefully as you only want to ask 1 or 2.  You then need to ensure that the information in the emails that you send are as targeted as you state!

7. Respect recipients’ privacy

Ensure that you have a summary of your privacy policies visible at point of opt in, with full details available on your website.

This not only keeps you complying legally (and you need to keep up to date on this as it is ever changing) but also inspires trust with the subscriber.

8. Give contacts as much control as you can.

If you have the opportunity to ask your contact what they would like to hear about, what format they would like the email and frequency then you are already building trust in the relationship by allowing them to be in control.

If you have the facility to hold this information online, to be managed by the user, this further supports the brand trust.

9. Use advanced automation

Simple broadcast methods still have their use but are rapidly loosing their response rates. You should also consider a range of behavioral segmentation and dynamic content to drive improved results and ROI of email campaigns.

arpReach was developed exactly with this in mind, you can see a full list of features here.

10. Know the laws affecting email marketing, and comply

Email and database marketing laws are ever changing and you need to keep up to date with these changes and ensure you comply at all times.

Data protection has been in the spot light more and more frequently over the last few years and the penalties for not complying are becoming more severe.

Therefore keep up to date and keep your reputation clean.