08/05/09
Still Using Microsoft Outlook for Email Marketing? STOP!
Using Outlook to send bulk e-newsletters to your customers? Whoa! Stop Right There!
Ask yourself these vital questions:
- What % of my customers receive my emails?
- What % of my customers actually open my emails?
Now if I was to tell you that out of the 1,000 emails you send each month…
- 110 never receive it;
- 620 never bothered opening it;
- and that only 54 click on anything within the email.
…would you still bother sending it? Probably not.
So? What am I doing wrong?
Well, there’s a chance your mailing list is out of date, that many of the email addresses are no longer used or are misspelt, or have been entered as .com’s instead of .co.uk’s. Then there’s the free email providers such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo and GMail all of whom have strict rules and monitoring in place to stop us from getting “spammed” or “phished” so they do two main things:
1.) Block emails from sources they believe to be spammers, based on a bizare and often unpredictable set of rules.
2.) Throw any low risk spam into your “Junk Folder” so it doesnt upset the bona fide emails in your lovely inbox.
This of course means your beautifully-crafted email doesn’t get through to a vast percentage of your customers.
Even if your email is one of the lucky, triumphant ones and makes it to the inbox like one of those virtual tadpoles you see on sex education videos at school, it then has to convince the recipient to click “open”…
A whole new host of issues then arises:
- Is the subject heading inviting/encouraging/inspiring/intriguing?
- Does it come from a reliable source?
- Is it swamped in a sea of more interesting emails?
Finally, the most important part - once opened, how do you keep the reader engaged and how on earth do you get them to click on that link directing them to your website so they can Buy, Buy, Buy! I’m not going to tell you that, but…
MailChimp Storms the Microsoft Castle!
MailChimp has all the other answers!
We’ve used MailChimp for a couple of years now and honestly struggle to find much fault with it! (Hmmm - Well I guess it could be FREE??)
It stores and manages your entire mailing list, helps you create a sign-up page for your website, gives you email templates, provides detailed reports and most importantly …
Integrates All This “Social Media” Malarky
Ok, so everyones told you how important it is to be a Twit, to have 4,000 “friends” on Facebook, that your meant to “Digg” everything thats “Delicious” on YourSpace or MyTube? Well, MailChimp provides you with a slick way to adhere to all this advice, simply click the buttons once your spanking new email newsletter gets sent and you’ll be taken to all the relevant social media sites so you can make the most of your latest work of litery genius.
Practicing What You Preach
We recently launched our LandingNet Chinwag - our laid-back approach to e-shots, e-newsletters, email marketing…whatever you want to call it!
The results were great, more than doubling the industry averages for the percentage of emails opened and clicked on, whilst receiving a tiny fraction of the average “bounce” rate.
“Hard Bounces” are those where the email address does not exist and is instantly returned by the email provider.
“Soft Bounces” are where the recipients inbox might be full or the email provider has tried to deliver the email but after several attempts it fails.
Our LandingNet Chinwag only received two “bounces” one hard, one soft and the hard bounce was actually our fault - we entered the email address in wrong! Whoops - hey, no-ones perfect right?? ;O)
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