Email Marketing - How to achieve higher open rates

As we are doing a lot of email marketing for many of our b2b clients, we have seen a trend in open rates effected by the email. HTML messages are finding much lower delivery rates and thus lower open rates. Adding lots of images and jpegs might make the offer look terrific, but the more complex the code the higher the chance of it being caught by spam filters.   Spam filters are getting very good at catching emails that are unsolicited, most sales emails are unsolicited - even if you know the person.  Second, what is your unique selling point or USP? Why should I care about your offer.  Don't ramble on about how good your company is or bla bla bla.  If you haven't explained how you can help in the first 2 sentences, you have lost them.  Think about all the people that are viewing your message on their smart phone, give it to them straight.  This will help them straighten it out and respond to an offer that makes sense.    Build your offer around getting a specific response, are you looking for them to go to a link? Or do you want them to call you or set up an appointment.  Remember the old adage, always be closing.  Close them on a webinar or meeting, but get them to do something. The more they have invested, the better the chance they will respond or work with your group.

Keep marketing and keep growing.

West List Co.

Learning from Medical Direct Marketing

Direct Marketers have been struggling to understand how to best reach people. With all the craze of the digital age, direct mail has been left to the waster side.  After chatting with Paul Richard from MedicalDirect,  we started to talk about the incredible results he was having with direct mail?  Yes, that is correct, Direct Mail was way outperforming his Fax and Email efforts.  Even with the increased cost of DM, email and fax marketing just don't measure up.  Now I am not suggesting this will work for all programs and target audiences, but its definitely something to think about. Here is a summary of the thoughts he shared about this recent trial.

Have you compared response to email, fax and mail?  Our client did.

            He tested all three using similar copy in a single campaign to target physicians.  Here’s how they responded.  

                        Email:                   9 of 3,000 responded (0.003%)

                        Fax:                    42 of 5,000 responded (0.008%)

                        Mail:                506 of 4,600 responded (11.0%)

            Why did so many respond to mail?  Three reasons.

1. Physicians still trust information delivered in a stamped envelope more than they trust information delivered digitally or by fax.

2. The kind of mail tested was more potent than everyday advertising mail.  A personal letter invited physicians to respond to a series of informative questions on the relevance of the product to their practice.  By walking the physician through the product story, this mail effectively duplicated personal detailing.

3. This mail gave physicians who don’t see reps a way to learn about the product.

If you reach these not called on physicians the way they prefer, you will gain sales and market share you would otherwise forgo.  We explore this further, enclosed.*

DoctorsDialog is a unique method of personalization and generating a quality relationship with doctors.  We can all learn from their methods to ensure we cut through the noise and provide impactful programs.

How good is your Landing Page? Tips for improving Lead Generation

There are many steps in the marketing process, finding the audience to reaching them to ensuring they come back or repeat as customers. Unfortunately most marketers are not valuing the importance of their site or the landing page that people first see when clicking on an email or advertisement. The acceptable rate of abandonment from the entry page will depend entirely on the industry and what you are trying to gain for the prospect/lead/visitor to your site. The contact us or method of requesting new information needs to be extremely professional and smooth. Here are some quick tips and words to live by when building your site and landing page.

1. Make it look consistent with the rest of the site. People don't want to think they have gone to another site to enter their information. This will make conversion rates very low.
2. Don't try and capture to much information or make to many fields compulsory.  Yes this weeds out some time wasters, but it also weeds out quality leads as well.
3. Make it look professional.  This is extremely important, especially if you are selling a professional service.  If you are a dog walker, people don't care if your site looks it was coded by a high schooler.

I hope this helps you build better more profitable DM programs.

Expected click and open rates for Email Blasts

A question that we seem to get alot in regards to email marketing is what kind of open rates we should expect with our email blast. Also, what is a good range and how do we determine if it is successful. Here are some rules to live by to help you determine the success of your next email program. For B2B email marketing the open rates are often lower than consumer blasts. An average open rate will be 10-18%, anywhere in this range should be thought of as successful. If it is lower you may want to work harder to target the right individuals. Business to Consumer email broadcasts are often higher on the open rates, usually 15-25%. The challenge with consumers is on the conversions. Consumers have become very guarded with their information and as a result will not respond to even the most intriguing offers. Consumers focused emails work best to create buzz for an event, send out a printable coupon or just communicate with a niche.

A business contact is often less likely to be sent spam. Hotmail, Yahoo and MSN accounts are often the most likely to be spammed. This makes it difficult to get through the gate keepers and present your offer as a trustworthy individual.

www.westlists.com

Email Measured Success - Lesson #2

Are you staying up todate on the laws and recent email legislation for marketing with email? PIPEDA is something that all Canadian Marketers need to adhere to. If you plan on making a common practice of marketing to your customers and past customers, you better know the restrictions facing you.