Mobile Marketing Vs. Email Marketing
Posted by Michael Herman
Mobile Marketing Vs. Email Marketing
A number of companies make a huge mistake and assume that if they already have email marketing, there is no need for mobile marketing and vice versa. We have previously spoken of the advantages provided by email marketing but are you aware of the power of the humble text message? With both forms of marketing, you are asking your customers to give you their contact information which will allow you to begin your direct marketing campaign.
An advantage of both email and mobile marketing is that you are ‘preaching to the choir’ so to speak. You are marketing to people who are already interested in your services (otherwise they wouldn’t have given you their details). As a result, you have a readymade target audience. There are subtle differences between the two which are covered below.
Catching The Eye
It has to be said that mobile text message marketing has a far higher view rate than its email counterpart. If you write emails with compelling subject lines, you may find that 20% of them are opened. In contrast, around 95% of text messages are read. If this seems artificially high, ask yourself: When was the last I last failed to open a text message?
Same Day Sales
Email marketing is more of a slow burner. The idea is to craft an email campaign that helps customers to gain your trust. This takes time and effort. With mobile marketing, you could increase your level of sales on the day you send the text messages. According to various surveys, it takes someone 14 minutes to open a text message on average. The average time it takes to open an email is 6 hours and 24 minutes. Although the number of phones with internet capability is increasing dramatically, there are still millions of people with ‘older’ phones. If you are offering special discounts, the customer can avail of the promotion by showing their phone with mobile marketing. With email marketing, they need to print out the page.
Cost
Email marketing certainly wins this battle as it is one of the lowest cost methods of marketing on the planet. Small businesses can find email marketing providers, such as Digital Street that send unlimited emails on their behalf for as little as $15 a month. This means an outstanding return on investment, well over 400%. In contrast, mobile marketing can be expensive but it does generally offer a higher rate of respondents.
In summation, companies need to utilize both forms of marketing. Emails allow them to build a rapport with customers in the long term whereas mobile marketing can lead to instant sales.
Why You Need An Email Marketing Agency
Posted by Michael Herman
Why You Need An Email Marketing Agency
For most businesses, email marketing is second only to SEO in terms of return on investment (ROI). Yet it is a specialized task which cannot be performed by a company who are already stretched to the limit when it comes to time and staff. If you don’t already have an employee who engages in email marketing, can you afford the time and expense of training someone? With an email marketing agency, you can really take your advertising to the next level. With the right agency, you will become more efficient while drastically improving your profit margin. With the help of experts, your email list can grow at a rate that suits your company’s overall growth
What Does An Agency Do?
Many agencies specialize in a handful of email marketing areas with some companies possessing the capacity to cover all aspects. Here is what an email marketing agency can potentially do for you:
- Create a plan of action based on your goals
- Manage the entire marketing campaign
- Write, format and send your emails.
- Use certain strategies to grow your email subscribers list
- Find the best vendor to send your emails
- Ensure that each email is delivered
- Analyze your metrics to see if the campaign is working and make changes if necessary
- Make sure that your marketing is consistent online and offline
- As you can see, a top quality email marketing agency gets through a lot of work so you don’t have to.
Making A Decision
It’s up to you to figure out what your company needs. When it comes to marketing your business, sit down with your team and discuss what your goals are for the next two years or so. Ask yourself where email marketing comes in the grand scheme of things. When choosing an email marketing agency, you will need to explain what your ROI goal is as well as outlining the challenges you expect to face.
When deciding on an agency, ask prospective candidates if they offer any other marketing services besides email marketing. Be sure to find out what their specialty areas are (if any) and ask them if they see any obstacles and if so, how do they avoid them?
Cost
Naturally, the cost of an email marketing agency is of paramount importance to businesses on a budget. In general, agencies like to charge several thousand dollars a month. They justify this expenditure with results which is fair enough but when you can get a first rate all-encompassing email marketing service like Digital Street for just $495 a month, you don’t need to break the bank unnecessarily. Digital Street has an experienced marketing team that will take care of all your email marketing needs. Explain your goals and expected ROI and Digital Street will do the rest.
The Importance Of Email Marketing Content
Posted by Michael Herman
The Importance Of Email Marketing Content
Email marketing is fantastic because emails are an incredibly inexpensive mode of communication. We can send hundreds, if not thousands of emails per dollar so it’s ok to have a dismal conversion rate right? After all, if you throw enough mud to the wall, some of it will stick! Not so. A large percentage of companies who use email marketing still have hideous conversion rates. So awful are their conversion rates that they actually lose money on the enterprise and quit email marketing altogether. Big mistake!
Bad Content, Bad Sales!
You have probably heard the ‘content is king’ maxim 1,000 times and if your email marketing campaign is faltering, perhaps you need to hear it 1,000 more! The modern consumer has internet access virtually all day long but your target audience probably has better things to do than read a bland, dull email that doesn’t make them feel as if it is a worthwhile expenditure of their time.
Rules?
What is good content? There are no hard and fast rules barring the usual ‘avoid spelling mistakes and make sure the email looks like it was written by someone whose first language is English’. The reason why there are few set rules is because emails are supposed to be an individual experience. Those who read the email need to feel as if it is they who are being specifically spoken to. When you are thinking about content, ask yourself what is important to your subscribers. Think about their age group, interests, hobbies and the products they have recently purchased.
Ask Questions
But I don’t know what my subscribers like! Ask and you will receive! Create a survey and send it to your subscribers. Ask them what they would like to see in an email. By doing this, you will make your subscribers feel as if they are an important part of the process. Alternatively, you can try different content on a regular basis. For example, you may write a newsletter style email one week and a ‘how to’ piece on the following email. Use analytics to find out if one email type was more popular than the other.
Above all, you need to be honest and ask yourself: Is this email worth reading? How do your subscribers benefit from reading this email? The most successful emails will also be worth sharing. You can write all the flowery prose you like but if there is no substance to your email, readers will soon unsubscribe or stop opening your emails. The bottom line is: Content ultimately makes or breaks your email campaign so pay more attention to it and spend less time on trivial matters.
Triple Email Marketing Results With Split Testing!
Posted by Michael Herman
Triple Email Marketing Results With Split Testing!
A recent study showed that split testing improved click through, email opening and purchase rates by over 190%! Email marketing providers such as Digital Street Inc. offer split testing which means you can upload multiple versions of one broadcast and send them to different areas of your database. After a few days, you analyze the results and compare them.
You should also set up conversion or sales tracking too as these are the results that matter most when it comes to your profit margin. Failure to do this means you will only be analyzing open and click through rates. Although these are important statistics, they do not tell you how much money your email marketing campaign is making. Once the test has been completed, you can use the better performing version in future emails. This version can then be used against another in future tests as you constantly seek improvement.
What can I test?
You can test just about any type of content though there will be occasions when you only wish to test one aspect of your email marketing plan. Choose from the following when testing:
- Headlines
- Subject lines
- Product images
- Landing pages
- Calls to action
Timing is Everything
Content variations are not the only thing you can test. For example, you could decide to send the same content at different times of the day or days of the week. You could also send content to different segments of your customer base. Most companies choose to use half of their customer base to conduct experiments on but if you feel that this is too risky and you don’t want to alienate your subscribers, you could test your new emails on 25% or even 10% of your audience provided you have a large enough base. Testing on too small a group will make the procedure almost irrelevant.
Is Split Testing Worth The Effort?
When you consider the fact that it can treble your sales rate, it is undoubtedly a productive use of your time. In fact, if you are currently with an email marketing service provider that doesn’t offer split testing; you should leave them and find one that does such as Digital Street Inc. It is possible to conduct the process manually by downloading your subscriber list, conducting some spreadsheet magic and uploading multiple lists that can be used once. However, the same vendors that don’t offer split testing also tend to prevent new lists being imported. You simply must utilize split testing and if you contact Digital Street Inc., you can watch your sales rate treble in the space of a few months thanks to this innovative method of finding out what works best in your emails.
Integrating & Managing Social Media & Email Marketing
Posted by Michael Herman
Integrating & Managing Social Media & Email Marketing
The rapid ascent of social media has ensured that marketers have a brand new tool in their arsenal when it comes to finding new leads. With the growth of social media marketing, it was assumed that email marketing was past its sell by date. In actual fact, social media has improved the performance of email rather than making it obsolete.
There is an array of myths surrounding email marketing with the most prevalent example being the aforementioned ‘death of email’. A recent survey conducted by Digital Street showed that some 95% of companies use email marketing while more than 80% use social media to market their organization. Integrating email marketing with social media makes sense when you consider the fact that 95% of 15-24 year olds on Facebook subscribe to a brand they ‘like’ on the network via email. If nothing else, it is apparent that social media subscribers need a valid email address to register so they are familiar with email if nothing else.
Start Integrating
Don’t assume that email and social media are mutually exclusive. The vast majority of companies that provide email tools also offer companies Facebook apps designed to help a user capture various email addresses. You should do this as soon as you create a Facebook page. Another way to integrate is to invite all your email subscribers to ‘Like’ you on Facebook, ‘follow’ you on Twitter etc.
All email marketing experts know the importance of using data such as opens and sign-ups when looking to find their target audience. You can use social media in a similar manner by analyzing the methods with which your email subscribers found you in the first place. This helps you get an idea of what they may wish to receive from you in future. You could reward those who subscribed to your email through Facebook with emails containing special offers which can only be activated on the social networking site.
It is also vital to ensure that your emails are mobile phone friendly. Figures from 2010 showed that almost 500 million people used mobile email and this figure is set to rise to over 1.5 billion by 2015. Social networks are being accessed via mobile phone at a rapid rate. In fact, this method of getting onto Facebook etc. is increasing by 30% a year on average.
If you are in doubt as to the effectiveness of integrating email and social media marketing, Digital Street has another statistic for you: Companies that used email marketing only saw their organizations grow by 8% whereas businesses that integrated email with social media saw a growth of 15%. There’s food for thought!
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