e-Mail marketing and advertising: More than just spam!
Let’s face it; the Internet’s tubes are chronically clogged today with un-asked for, un-appreciated, and un-wanted marketing e-mails. From the latest announcement that you’ve got a million dollars waiting in Lagos Nigeria, to aMazInG!! PriCe$ on V!@gra! I know that your inbox has to be suffering (think of poor me, at last count I have at least 14 email accounts that I regularly monitor for both personal and business purposes (that’s a lot of spicy pork shoulder and ham luncheon meat!). However, when used properly & legally, e-mail can be an effective communication medium to carry out your marketing and advertising efforts to increase sales on your site. This month I’ll lay the groundwork of some of the legal and technical underpinnings of setting up your e-mail marketing and advertising.
First let’s get some quick legal stuff out of the way. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t even play one on TV. Nothing here is legal advice. I bring that up because as of 2003 there is a law on the books known as the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) that controls “commercial” email. One area that is not regulated by the CAN-SPAM act is e-mail communication that the receiver has “opted-in” for. That is, communication e-mails that the receiver has given explicit permission to the sender to send. Therefore, all I’m going to write about, or answer emails about, are what are known as a “subscriptions.” The common sense approach comes down to: don’t send emails to people that haven’t asked you to send them emails, and under no circumstances send them any more emails if they tell you to stop. To get more “best practices” for how to be a good web citizen when it comes to e-mail, check out the Email Sender and Provider Coalition.
Now then, to move on to some practical matters as to how to most effectively use email as part of your marketing and advertising tool-kit. First up is how do you effectively manage the task of e-mail marketing from a technology and systems standpoint? As with most things web-related, there are several options. First, unless you only have like ten people on your email list, you’re not going to be using Outlook Express to run this! That’s like changing a tire with a tooth brush. Way wrong tool for the job.
You’re going to either need to invest in a developing or purchasing a system to run the operation in-house, or use an outside service that will handle all the technical and operational details of list management (subscribes, un-subscribes) as well as distribution and tracking. Any attempt to do it yourself is essentially suicide if you are anything like what I think 99.9% of the people reading this column are like (myself included). I’m going to save you a lot of time and money and just tell you to partner with an outside service.
A good e-mail marketing partner will be up to date on all of the best practices, as well as have technical solutions for things like avoiding various Internet Service Provider’s (ISP’s) Black-Lists and spam filters, as well as producing desirable HTML based e-mails in a manner that will be visible to all but the most obscure e-mail clients out there. In fact, the latest versions of Microsoft’s e-mail program Outlook actually take a huge leap backward in terms of accurately rendering or displaying HTML e-mails. The e-mail marketing partner you choose needs to be VERY on top of the ball to help you remain effective.
Part of the effectiveness also comes in when dealing with getting people on your list when they want to hear from you, and just as importantly off your list when they would rather not hear from you any longer. To avoid getting the rep of a spammer, you need to make sure that these processes are solid with the partner you choose.
The final, and very important piece, is the measurement and tracking abilities that a good partner provides you. You need to be able to track and monitor how many people open your emails, click on your offers, forward the emails to friends, and heaven-forbid, choose to unsubscribe. Your partner should be able to help you craft your emails to make sure that all of these measurements are in the green and getting greener as you continue your e-mail marketing campaigns.
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of companies that handle e-mail marketing with a huge range of service offerings, capabilities, prices, and so on. Because of my very limited space in this column, and the fact that I could spend six months worth of articles talking about all the things to watch out for when it comes to choosing a company to work with, I’m just going to direct you to the company that I use: Inbox360. This is not a commercial for them, and I get nothing if you use them. I’ve since moved away from Inbox360. Their responsiveness and quality fell off dramatically since I wrote this. I now use and recommend a company/service called MailChimp The saga of the ever shifting email marketing vendors continues: Mailchimp has begun taking an overly draconian view of their interpretation of the CAN-SPAM act and now require explicit OPT-IN for your OWN list before they will let you send through them. Read this column on CAN-SPAM and email marketing if you want to find out why this is going overboard. I now recommend using Constant Contact. You’re more than welcome to Google “email marketing” and wade through the 284 million results. But I’ve had pretty much no major issues with them, they are priced competitively, they have decent reporting tools, and they have several motorcycle and powersports customers so they have some knowledge of our market and may be able to help you with specific issues endemic to our vertical market.
That’s all I have room for this month. Next month I’ll finish the subject of e-mail marketing with some ideas and thoughts of how you can set up your campaigns to increase sales on your website, as well as build a sense of community between your dealership and your customers.
Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, selling-online
