Recently I had a client who wanted to target their data base and wanted to know of a great marketing tool when using email marketing. Many ask the following questions when setting up a Email marketing Campaign:
Choosing your Marketing Tools
There are 100′s of companies that offer great Email Marketing, you can often set up a Free account to try it out before you commit to any contracts. You can also find Pay as you go, that will suit smaller Marketing Campaigns or Monthly Newsletters.
I think MailChimp is easy to use and is as cheap as $10.00 a Month for 0-500 Emails.
How do I set up an account?
Setting up an account is easy! it is simply done online. You might need a Web Developer to help you with the initial set up of your template, and to help you import your data base.
What are the costs
There are multiple companies that offer different types of accounts, some will have a flat rate and anything form 1c to 5c per email. You will need to decide what your budget is for you campaign and how often you will target your audience. Some are perfect if you only aim to send out a Monthly Newsletter.
Can I track how many emails are opened?
Yes, and your Email Campaign statistics will give you complete feedback on ever element of your email. You can track how many were opened, or unopened, time, what links that clicked on and which emails were ignored. Changing your Subject Line is really important at attracting your success rates and making sure you have plenty of links.
Can you see the results of who clicked on hyper links with in the email?
Yes, and this is great feed back to help you improve your content for your next email and what was successful or not.
Is there a way of tracking who opened the email
Yes, the timing of your email is imperative of the success rate of your email campaign. The time of day, and what day of the week is also very important. You might even need to split your data base in Geo Targeting as you will need to be specific of what time of the day your email arrives in thee USA or UK. Most Email marketing accounts will have CRONS, which means you can set up a time and date for your email to go out, with no need for you to worry. The stats are very Big Brother??
What are bounce backs
Bounce backs are basically a email that bounces back to the mail server, an old email address that no longer works. This is another important reminder of why you should have subscribe and unsubscribe or update you details at the base or in the footer of all emails sent out within your campaigns. Also most Campaign Email programs will have script that is run over a few campaigns and if a particular emails keeps bouncing back, it is simply deleted of the list – but it is still kept for you to confirm in the back-end or in the control panel.
Why Choose a Email Campaign Partner?
I strongly suggest choosing a Campaign Partner for several reasons.
- You can design a Template easily in HTML and Text
- You will not get blocked by the large Teclos like Telstra for SPAM. Sending out over 500 emails will make the ISP’s and the Telcos suspect your emails are SPAM and or any images attached are Virues. Most ISP have there own rules on how much data goes through there mail servers.
- Choosing a Campaign Partner like Mail Chimp, Campaign Monitor, Vertical Response (also will work with your CRM’s) they will give you the advantage that they set up there own Mail Servers purley for Email Marketing.
- When you design your Email Campaign, all images and the code will sit on there Servers so when you receive the Email, it points to the images and opposed to the images being sent as attachments.
Enjoy the bliss of running a Email Newsletter – Tried and Tested
As you know, we all have multiple email accounts, & different operating platforms will deliver different behaviours of how the code will behave in different email programs. ie Microsoft office Outlook, Mac OS X Mail, GMAIL, Yahoo, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL, Mozilla Thunderbird, – the list goes on.
So the important element of having a template that is tried and tested will guarantee your Monthly Newsletter will be delivered just as you have designed it.
Enjoy the results and have some fun creating and monitoring targeting your audience and increasing your ROI 
Remember the time you take working on your site to raise its conversion rate, and the time you dedicate to traffic building activities, and directing a Email Campaign will hopefully drive some of your potential clients to your site.
Happy Emailing
