E-mail Strategy For Your Web Site
Since e-mail is the engine that propels your customers from step to step along the five-stage customer development cycle, it’s important that you develop an attainable, consistent, and effective e-mail strategy.
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- Your e-mail strategy has to be attainable in that, once you commit to it, you can be reasonably certain that you have the resources to maintain an e-mail mailing list, can develop your messages at appropriate intervals, and have the talent necessary to write compelling e-mail.
- Your e-mail strategy has to be consistent in that success comes from predictability. An on-again/off-again e-mail strategy will alienate your customers and prospects. If you promise to send a once-a-month e-mail newsletter or bimonthly e-mail alerts, the success of your relationship marketing strategy is undermined the first time you miss your self-imposed deadline.
- Most important, your e-mail has to be effective. Unread e-mail is a waste of Web resources, your time, and the recipient’s time. Your e-mail has to be more than “brag and boast” advertising. It has to be interesting in style and relevant in content. More important, it has to be meaningful enough to motivate visitors to visit the relevant premium content areas of your Web site.
It’s important to remember that your customers and prospects are receiving more and more e-mail every day. Unless your e-mail message stands out by virtue of its brevity or extremely relevant content, it’s unlikely to be read. Your e-mail will either sit in your customer’s in-box, waiting until a later (that often never arrives) to be read or the recipients will delete your message. Worse, they may request that you remove them from your e-mail distribution list.
Using E-mail to Drive Visitors to Your Web Site
E-mail should be sent to previous Web site visitors or new prospects each time new information is posted on the Web site. The new information should be as easy to locate on the Web site as possible. Some of the ways this is done include:
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- E-mail alerts inform customers when new content has been added to your Web site. You can include the URL of an unlinked page in your alert so that recipients can click on a link and go directly to the desired page.
- You can send e-mail teasers, which are a bit longer than alerts. E-mail teasers typically list the headlines for new information placed on your Web site along with a paragraph or two amplifying the headline and further describing the information that has been added. Teasers will also include the URLs of the specific pages of the Web site the new information is placed on, permitting visitors to go directly to the new content.
- Your bimonthly or monthly e-mails can function like a newsletter, telling the whole story—or enough of the story—so that visitors do not have to go back to the Web site to learn more. Although the text will be unformatted, visitors will be reminded of your constant efforts to provide meaningful information. More important, visitors may choose to forward your newsletter to friends and business associates who might benefit from the newly added content on your Web site.
Long e-mails are read if they offer the recipient compelling and relevant information. The 1to1.com e-mail newsletters sent by Peppers and Roger fall into this category. Each e-mail contains several full-length articles. Although tightly written, each e-mail contains enough information to communicate a key point.
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- Another approach is the summary approach. This involves sending information that updates your customer’s or prospect’s knowledge of your Web site. One of the best examples of this is the weekly alert that E. P. Levine sends out informing camera lovers of additions to their inventory of used equipment. Summary e-mail can be read at a glance and avoids the necessity for visitors to launch their Web browser and visit the Web site itself.
- Your e-mail can also contain attached files, such as formatted word processed documents, PowerPoint presentations, or sophisticated publications created using page layout programs like Adobe PageMaker and saved using Adobe Acrobat.
Adobe Acrobat permits you to distribute fully formatted publications that appear on screen exactly as they looked when they were created and can also be printed on the recipient’s printer. Acrobat publications contain all of the formatting attributes found on a the original print version of the publication, including typefaces not available on the individual’s computer. Adobe Acrobat documents preserve all of the design nuances, such as subtle letter and line spacing, found on the original document. The Adobe Acrobat Reader has already been widely installed on computers and can be downloaded for free from the Adobe Web site. (Always provide a link to the appropriate page of the Adobe Web site for the convenience of those who may not have already downloaded Adobe Acrobat.)
There are three primary disadvantages of distributing attached documents.
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1. Acrobat files take time to download and occupy valuable computer hard disk or network space.
2. Many corporations, in order to prevent the transmission of computer viruses, do not allow attached files through their firewalls or e-mail security systems.
3. Attached files do not drive e-mail recipients back to your Web site, which, after all, is the whole purpose of sending the e-mail.
Choosing the right option
Any one of the above options might be enough to guarantee success. More important than the perfection with which these options are executed is the consistency in which you implement your e-mail campaign.
A one-page e-mail “teaser” that goes out like clockwork on the first and fifteenth of each month is far better than an occasional four-page e-mail newsletter that disappears from view for months at a time. Your goal is to constantly keep your prospects and customers aware of your presence and, whenever possible, to drive visitors—and their friends and coworkers—back to your Web site for more information.
The very fact that you consistently send an e-mail teaser or e-mail newsletter to your customers and prospects reminds them of your professionalism and your commitment to providing the information they need to do their job better or enjoy their pleasures with more satisfaction. Consistency equals success.
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of using information and e-mail to propel the customer development cycle. Information used to be frightfully expensive to communicate to prospects and customers. Producing, printing, and mailing postcards and newsletters can be expensive and it can take weeks—often months—for even the simplest project to get designed, produced, printed, addressed, and mailed.
All in all, the best e-mail approach combines brevity and meaningful content with one or more hyperlinks that take visitors to a specific premium content page that interests them.
* Source - Streetwise Relationship Marketing On The Internet
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