eMarketing Innovation in Pittsburgh PA

This is the equivalent of saying I already sell enough.  This excuse means one of two things.  The first is that you’re at capacity, whatever you sell takes up a certain amount of time and energy and you can’t take on any more, or have decided not to take on more work.  If that’s the case then you’ve made a life decision, not an effectiveness decision.  There’s nothing wrong with that unless an email marketing campaign is attempted on the cheap (either time, energy, or money) and backfires.  In that case, emails not to blame, the site owner is. 

The second case is that the site owner doesn’t feel they need more traffic.  They either feel they are making enough or fear moving their site to the next level.  This tends to creep in when small businesses begin to grow and more site traffic means larger hosting fees or new technology solutions, like dedicated servers.  Don’t let growth opportunities pass by.  Websites are often like businesses, they are either growing or dieing.

For the truly motivated site owner there is never “enough” traffic.  Email marketing also has the added benefit of being able to strengthen relationships and up-sell clients.  Don’t rest on your laurels, use every medium available that can increase site traffic and conversions.

This has got to be the most depressing reason for not doing email marketing.  When this excuse is used, it typically goes deeper than email marketing, it saturates the person’s or organizations mentality.  This is akin to saying my product or service is boring or I don’t do enough to talk about.  The fact is there is something to say, it just might be too close to see.  People tend to stop seeing the appeal of what they do after a while because it becomes mundane to them.  Every person, company, or organization has a story, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t exist.  The challenge is figuring out what part of the story matters to the intended audience.

If you want to run weekly emails that are nothing but digital fliers, you’re right, you have nothing to say.  If you’re spouting mission statements or dull facts about how the company started, you’re saying very little.  However, that doesn’t mean you have nothing to say, you just aren’t saying it.  Every business can and should do more than slapping ads or dolling out facts on the web.  Sure fliers or mission statements are boring and no one cares but that doesn’t mean the story they’re trying to tell is a bad one.  It’s like saying Shakespeare is terrible when a bad group of amateurs perform his work.  The way it’s being told is at fault, not the story. 

So look into your fliers, mission statements, or history.  There probably is a compelling story there.  Drill down to what you think the audience will respond to.  Chances are you’re an expert at what you do and if you write about that expertise, people will pay attention.  Good content is always in demand.

Don’t use the “nothing to say” excuse.  If someone really feels this way, it’s probably time to move on completely.  Email marketing is a great way to spread a message about an organization and if someone can’t get excited about that opportunity, there’s a bigger problem than putting off an email campaign, there’s a lack of passion for what they do.

Many people don’t start email marketing because they don’t have a list to send to.  There’s two pieces of good news here.  The first is that you didn’t try to buy a list and blast out an email.  While that isn’t necessarily spam the productivity and conversion rate will be low.  The second piece of good news is that no company has an extensive list until they decide to do an email marketing campaign.  Lists never fall from the sky to a fortunate marketer, a plan is executed to get the message to the intended audience.

So where does the list come from?  If you’re lucky, you already have it and don’t know it.  It’s amazing what some companies have buried away in a database or spreadsheet that with a little effort can be a foundation for an email marketing list.  Once the contact information has been organized an offer can be extended to these people to subscribe to the new email campaign.  The companies that don’t already have a list are undoubtedly passing up opportunities to build one.  Do clients get a chance to sign up, could an offer be added to existing forms?  Do you do event marketing, trade shows, networking events, or direct marketing?  Do you have a website with traffic?  These are viable avenues to allow people to join an email marketing campaign.

The point is everyone can get a list.  The plan is different from person to person or company to company, but the building blocks are there.  It takes a little more diligence than buying addresses or phone numbers and a system needs to be put in place so it’s not an administrative nightmare.  However, it’s possible, organizations just needs to put a plan together to build a list.  Decide to do email marketing and as you’re first agenda item, make a plan to build your initial list.  With a good plan lists tend to grow faster than expected and also tend to have a beneficial side effect of keeping information flow and management more organized.

Email marketing has become one of the most widely misused marketing media.  Because of that many myths, fears, and inaccuracies float around about how and if it should be done. 

If, can be thrown out.  It can be done.  Many companies run valuable email campaigns that drive sales leads and revenue.  If one organization can do it, so can others.  The real question is how should it be done and is it worth the time, energy, and money necessary to roll out a quality campaign.

My next posts will deal with the 4 most common excuses for not doing email marketing and some ways to overcome them.

Many people try email marketing and get frustrated by the lack of results.  Usually they rent a list, hastily put a message together, and blast it out.  Then when they get no results, they complain that email doesn’t work.  Their email didn’t work because it’s spam.  Email marketing works if it is done intelligently and responsibly.  Better yet, it builds on its own success.  The better the campaign, the better the results, which makes an even better campaign, which then produces more results.  Why is this?  Because reputation matters in email.

Every time an email marketing communication message is sent it builds reputation, either positive or negative.  Over time that perception is built up.  If it’s a positive one the recipient will be more and more likely to view the sender as a credible resource and be more open minded to working with them.   

After a while it’s almost impossible to change the reputation because the audience has a pre-conceived notion of what the email will be and its hard to sway them in another way.  That’s great if you’re offering intelligent valuable emails, but terrible if you’re sending sales message after sales message that’s regarded as spam.

In fact it’s not just your audience that makes this judgement.  ISP’s keep track of your reputation by recipient responses.  Some judge solely on reputation, others might go for a reputation 80%, content 20% split.  Using spam reports and recipient complaints greatly dictates how they handle your email messages.   So not only is your ROI based on the quality of the campaign, so is the deliverability rate.

Obviously this is important to maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing but there is an underlying warning to building a reputation.  Many people decide to dabble in email marketing.  They sign up for a low cost service, use the pre-defined templates, throw a poorly thought out sales message together, and send it out.  When the sales or leads don’t flow in, they do it again.  The patient ones might do this a dozen times before declaring email as a wasted medium.  Unfortunately what they’ve done is make email marketing an even harder avenue for them to take advantage of.  They’ve set a bad precedent and formed a negative reputation.  It now takes even more work to get results from email.

So what hold true for many marketing and communication methods, applies to email as well.  Put some thought and time into what you’re doing before you do it.  Do some research learn what works and what doesn’t.  You can read books, hire consultants, contract it out, go to seminars, listen to tapes, whatever works for you.  The information is there, take advantage of it.  If you don’t you’re bound to make a  spam campaign, form a negative reputation, and make future sales and marketing efforts harder.  Email marketing will build a reputation, make sure it’s a positive one.