Building An E-Mail Marketing Campaign

Below are five steps involved in launching a successful e-mail marketing campaign.

Step 1: Obtaining a List of E-Mail Addresses
Perhaps the biggest challenge is obtaining a list of qualified e-mail addresses. You can take two different approaches: build your own list, or rent a list. One way to build your list is to ask your Web site visitors to sign up for further information about your company, its products, and services. The advantage to this method is that you collect a relevant list of pre-qualified customers who have expressed interest in your company. The disadvantage is that it can take a long time to build a list. You must also be vigilant about following the CAN-SPAM Act laws. Keep the following in mind as you build your list:
Obtain your customers' permission to send them e-mail by giving them a way to opt-in. Make it clear that you are asking them to sign up to receive commercial information about your company, products, and services. Make the form they fill out short and easy. Ask them about their interests so that you can send them targeted e-mail.
Clearly explain your privacy policy (what you will do with the personal information they give you) and adhere to it.
Offer something free--but of value to your customers--to entice them to sign up. Some examples are: free information or research, product discounts, a chance to win a prize, personalized customer service, access to additional services on your Web site, or notification of future events.
You must also provide a clear and easy method for your customers to opt-out of further e-mail.
The second method is to rent a list of e-mail addresses from another company. This can be a quick-fix solution, but ratchet down your expectations: rented lists are normally only one-third to one-half as effective as lists you build yourself. If you rent a list, you must manage the process closely. To get your money's worth and avoid legal issues, ensure that:
The company you are renting the list from follows all rules of the CAN-SPAM Act.
The list contains qualified e-mail addresses; in other words, the people on this list have indicated that they want information about the type of products and services that your company offers.
The list has been kept up-to-date and contains only people who have recently opted-in or that communicate regularly with the company you are renting the list from.
The company guarantees useful results. Guaranteeing that a percentage of customers open your e-mail is not nearly as useful as guaranteeing a percentage of responses or click-throughs. Be wary if no guarantees are offered.
You are comfortable with how the campaign will be managed. Will the company provide you with the list so that you can physically send the e-mail, or do you have to submit the e-mail message to the company so that they can send it. The latter is very common when the company wants to protect the privacy of their list, but it also means you must rely on the accuracy and timeliness of their reporting mechanisms.

Step 2: Define Goals for Your Campaign
Like any other marketing effort, you should define goals for your e-mail campaign. Are you trying to increase brand awareness, drive customers to your Web site, increase sales, or improve customer relations? Once you've decided on your goal, define what success will look like. If you want to drive customers to your Web site, you should already have several weeks or months of traffic statistics to use as a baseline for measuring the success of your e-mail marketing campaign.

Step 3: Determine Customer Segment to Reach
Once you define goals for your e-mail campaign, you need to define the customers that can best help you get there. If you took the time to ask your customers several questions about their interests when they opted-in to your e-mail program, it will pay off now. Being able to send targeted e-mail to specific customer segments is usually much more effective than sending generic e-mail offers to your entire list.

Step 4: Create the E-Mail Message
With a campaign goal defined and a customer segment identified, you can now create the e-mail message. One of the keys here is personalization. Any marketing piece must appeal to its intended audience, but this is especially important in e-mail because customers are so inundated with spam and junk they don't want. When your e-mail lands in your customer's in-box, it must stand out from the clutter; it must be clearly and immediately obvious that it is of interest to the customer. Here are some proven techniques to help you out:
The "To" line of the e-mail should include your customer's name; even this simple level of personalization increases the chances of your e-mail being read.
The "From" line should clearly indicate your company's name, or the name of someone associated with your company (and preferably known by the customer). A recent survey by Return Path revealed that recognizing a trusted company's name in the From line helped influenced 60% of customers to open an e-mail. If the customer does not recognize who the e-mail is from, they are much less likely to open it, fearing spam or viruses.
The most important line is the "Subject." It is vital that these words accurately describe the value proposition of the e-mail, but most importantly, they must grab the customer's attention. However, don't overplay your hand. For instance, putting the word "free" in your Subject line is more likely to cause suspicion than excitement. It is also a good idea to keep the Subject as short as possible; recent research by EmailLabs found that open rates were 12.5% higher and that click-throughs were 75 percent higher when the Subject line contained 50 characters or less.
The body of the e-mail should begin by addressing the customer. As in all direct marketing pieces, it is generally best to make your message as short as possible. Also, end with a call to action: if you want to drive traffic to your Web site, provide both a link and an incentive for clicking on the link. If you provide a link, be sure it takes the customer to the specific page on your Web site that provides the information or offer mentioned in your e-mail.
Using HTML to create vibrant, professional e-mail messages not only increases the appeal of the message to customers, but it is an excellent way to extend your branding. You can even format the contents of your e-mail to look like a page from your Web site. However, you should avoid loading your marketing e-mail with lots of graphics--customers with older computers or dial-up Internet connections may become frustrated if the e-mail takes to long to download and open.

Step 5: Measure Your Success
An enormous benefit of using e-mail marketing is the speed and precision with which you can measure customer reaction. You can conceive of a campaign, execute it, and measure it's effectiveness within a matter of days. Following are some of the most important metrics to track for each e-mail campaign:
Sent: This is simply the number of e-mail sent and functions as a baseline for several other metrics
Bounced: The number of e-mail that bounced back because they were undeliverable. Some e-mail may not be deliverable for temporary reasons (such as a failure at the customer's ISP); other e-mail may be undeliverable because the customer's e-mail account is no longer active. If e-mail is undeliverable to a customer after three consecutive campaigns, their contact information should be considered invalid and deleted from your list.
Delivered: The number of e-mail sent, minus the bounce back rate, equals the number actually received by customers. DoubleClick reports that the average delivery rate is 90 percent.
Opened: The actual number of e-mail opened by customers. DoubleClick reports an average of 34.3 percent. If your average is significantly lower, consider changing the text in your e-mail's Subject line.
Opt-Out: The number of customers who opted-out of receiving future e-mail from you. Obviously a high number here means that customers reacted poorly to the message or offer in the current e-mail.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): The number of customers who responded to the call to action by clicking on a link in the e-mail. DoubleClick reports the average is 8.2 percent.
Conversion: This is the ultimate number of successes, the people who were motivated by the e-mail and acted on it. If the goal of the e-mail was to sell more cameras, this is the number of people who bought cameras.
The inexpensive nature of e-mail marketing encourages experimentation; its ability to reach segmented audiences encourages refinement. Test variations of your messages on small groups of customers to find the most successful solution. Keep your e-mail lists fresh and relevant by constantly working to add new customers and weeding out old, expired, and invalid data.

Advantages of Email Marketing

Used correctly, e-mail can be a powerful marketing tool for increasing brand recognition, increasing sales, driving traffic to your Web site, and building and maintaining customer relationships. Some of the advantages of e-mail over more traditional marketing methods include:

Inexpensive: You may need to spend some money on designing your text- and HTML-based e-mail pieces, but you can eliminate paper, printing, manufacturing, and shipping costs.

Fast: An e-mail piece can be created very quickly, and many of your customers will receive it within 30 seconds of it being sent. Likewise, response time is very fast: 80% of customers who respond to an e-mail piece do so within 48 hours of receiving it.
Personalized Message to a Targeted Audience: E-mail enables you to send targeted messages to specific segments of your customer base. Research shows that personalizing an e-mail greatly increases the chance that your customer will read it; it also increases the chance they will follow your call to action.

Verifiable Results: Like no other marketing vehicle, e-mail enables you to immediately measure many types and degrees of customer reaction to your campaign. You can measure how many customers open your e-mail, how many click on a link in it, and how many ultimately purchase a product or take any other action suggested in the message.

Launch of Millennium Coastal Park website

A new website promoting the Millennium Coastal Park near Llanelli to vistors has been launched today by West Coast Solutions, one of the key features of the website is a map outlineing all the places to visit within the park. The website also displays photos of each partitcular area of the Millennium Coastal Park.

Call us 0845 368 2262 to discuss promoting your business on this website, and increase the vistor numbers to your own websites. If you have a Leisure or Tourism realated business or Hotel B/B or Holiday Let business give us a call for rates to advertise on the website.

Visit the site at: www.millenniumcoastalpark.com

Online retailing 'surging ahead'

Online retailing in the UK has grown at its fastest rate since the dotcom bubble burst, a survey has claimed.
The amount of money spent by consumers shopping online increased by 33.4% to £10.9bn last year, retail analysts Verdict Research said.
Verdict also forecast that online sales would triple over the next five years.
The research group said that faster and cheaper Internet access was driving the growth at a time when many High Street retailers were seeing demand wane.
Of 3,000 customers surveyed, two thirds had broadband Internet connections and shopped online more often because of it, Verdict said. The company's research covered online spending on goods, and did not include sales of flights, tickets and insurance.

Source: BBC

Two cautioned over wireless Internet "piggy-backing"

Two people have been arrested and cautioned for using someone else's wireless Internet connection without permission, known as "piggy-backing", police said on Wednesday.
The practice, which sharply divides Internet users, has been fuelled by the rapid growth of fast wireless broadband in homes and people's failure to secure their networks.
On Saturday, a man was arrested after neighbours spotted him sitting in a car outside a home in Redditch, Worcestershire, using a laptop computer to browse the Internet.
A 29-year-old woman was also arrested in a car in a similar incident in the same area last month.
Both received an official caution, a formal warning one step short of prosecution, for "dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment".
They were among the first to be arrested for piggy-backing in Britain. Gregory Straszkiewicz, from west London, was the first person to be convicted of the offence in 2005. He was fined 500 pounds and given a 12-month conditional discharge.
"Wireless networks don't stop at the walls of your home," said PC Tony Humphreys, of West Mercia Constabulary. "Without the necessary protection, your neighbours or people in the road outside may be able to connect to your network."
There is a lively ethical debate in Internet chatrooms over whether piggy-backing is immoral or harmless.
"If it travels through the air it is open season," wrote one contributor to a Web forum. Another wrote: "If it's out there unsecure and I'm not trespassing, it's fair game."
Up to a quarter of home wireless connections are unsecured, according to a recent survey by the consumer finance Web site www.moneysupermarket.com.
Jason Lloyd, the site's head of broadband, said it left people open to identity theft, fraud and pornography being downloaded using their account.
"The repercussions can be severe," he said. "It's bad enough when your neighbours can use your Internet connection freely, but this becomes far more sinister if someone uses your wireless connection for criminal activity."Businesses are also at risk. A survey of 320 companies by the London trade show Infosecurity Europe found that a quarter have no wireless security policy.

Source: Reuters

IT illiteracy undermines business productivity

Firms are finally facing up to the shortage of tech-savvy amongst their workforce

A survey last year of over 74,000 employers from the Learning and Skills Council found that 13 percent of applicants across all vacancies where firms have identified skills shortages lack general IT user skills.

Meanwhile, a recent study from government and employer-backed IT skills development body e-skills UK found that UK employers felt they needed to improve the IT skills of 7.6 million employees out of an IT-using workforce of 21.5 million.
"It is a major problem," said Martin Harvey director of IT user skills at e-skills UK. "We have evidence that those with the right IT skills for their role can save 40 minutes a day compared to those who are less adept. It may not sound a lot but when you add it up that means a huge amount of productivity is being lost."

Meanwhile, recent workplace trends such as the shift towards home and remote working and the movement offshore of many IT support teams suggest it is becoming ever more important that individual employees have a mastery of the IT hardware and software they use.
Experts agree that in the short term the best way to tackle this problem is through increased investment in IT training, and a wide range of courses and qualifications covering basic IT skills are now available to help bolster employees' IT skills.

However, with over 640 different IT qualifications available in the UK selecting the right course can prove extremely tricky, according to Harvey. " Employers are baffled by this plethora of certificates," he said. "Even when people have some of the better qualifications like CLAiT, the European Computer Driving License (ECDL) and the City and Guilds' E-Quals certificate some employers are uncertain about the currency of the qualification."
He added that having to put staff through the entire course to gain a qualification when they may only require knowledge in certain areas also put many firms off investing in putting employees through such certification schemes.
E-skills is seeking to tackle this problem with its new employer-backed iTQ qualification, which Harvey said would provide firms with the ability to tailor the course and exam to suit their needs.
Lauren Frere, product manager at accreditation body OCR, which offers the iTQ qualification said it provides employees with the ability to formally certify their working knowledge of IT user skills. "Employers can customise these qualifications to suit their organisations particular requirements," she said. "For example, bespoke software, such as a corporate intranet or existing accounting software can be added... Practical needs of the business and individuals are [also] met as learning can take place in bite-sized chunks, and can often be incorporated into the working day."
However, regardless of the confusion surrounding qualifications some critics argue that employers are not doing enough to upskill their staff. "Investment in training is key but many companies have a level of myopia when it comes to the benefits of training," argued Robert Chapman, managing director of IT training form The Training Camp. "IT is the tool that most people use in their jobs and it must hamper productivity if people aren’t skilled in using it, but many companies still see training as a cost rather than an investment, and believe people will just leave if they train them up."
But Harvey insisted that firms are increasingly aware of the need to give staff IT training. "Employers are now investing a huge amount," he said. "One survey found that 58 percent of employers are investing in IT training making it the most widespread form of workplace training after mandatory areas like health and safety."
Jeremy Beale, head of e-business policy at the CBI, agreed businesses are now aware of the value of IT training and argued that at some larger firms extensive training had even become mandatory. "If you look at BT, which has a very mature home working policy, staff have to do the [basic IT] training if they are going to work from home," he said. "That is sensible practice as it ensures staff get the right skills to drive the productivity gains you'd expect."
However, he admitted that some firms find delivering IT training to staff easier than others. "If there is a problem it is in the SME space," he said. "A lot of smaller companies don’t have sufficient resources for a proper IT department, let alone resources to train up staff further."
There is hope, however, that even these cash-strapped firms are beginning to see the IT literacy of their workforce improve as online learning technologies and improved user interfaces make it easier than ever before for users to master applications.
Darren Strange, product manager at Microsoft, said the vendor's latest version of Office embodied this new generation of user-friendly apps. "Office 2007 moves away from a scenario where you need to understand every aspect of the application to get where you want, to a more results-oriented design that means that if you know what you want it is far easier to deliver," he said. "We've also invested heavily in an online resource that offers all kinds of training from bite sized chunks you can learn in your lunch hour to full training c ourses."
Furthermore the emergence of a new tech-savvy generation of school and university leavers who have grown up with Google and MySpace leaves some firms hopeful that the problems posed by computer illiteracy could soon become a thing of the past. "There is a generational issue here," said Beale. "Kids coming out of school do find these skills much easier."
However, Chapman argued that that while new user interfaces and the retirement of the baby boomers may reduce the problem of computer illiteracy, relatively few people were making full use of the IT at their fingertips. " There is a contradiction here," he said. "Interfaces are getting easier to use, but at the same time functionality is getting richer and richer. As a result more people can make use of Excel for example, but few are using the full richness of the software and maximising their productivity."

Source: IT Week

Accessible websites can be cool too !

The majority of websites do not comply with accessibility standards, too often websites are designed to look "COOL" with heavy use of flash and images outweighing accessibility needs.

Attitudes need to change among those web designers who still I consider wrongly that accessible, compliant websites are generally a pain to create, involve extra work and do not look attractive.

The situation will only improve with the use of software tools that help ensure the pages generated comply with accessibility standards.

Here at West Coast Solutions we strive to make sure all the websites we devleop comply with the highest accessibility criteria.

Click here to view some of the websites we have developed.