| Dec.
2002
| Volume 2, Issue
6 Hawthorne Associates www.hawthornemedia.com (978) 745-4878 IN THIS ISSUE: 1. Industry Insights 2. More Internet Marketing Tips Industry
Insights This is our last newsletter of 2002 and we hope all of you have had a good year and that 2003 will be even better. We know that 2002 has not been an easy year, so congratulate yourselves on surviving one of the toughest years ever for business-to-business companies. As we look forward to 2003 we'd like your feedback. What would you like us to cover in 2003? Are there specific questions you'd like answered? Any changes or additions you'd like us to make? The more we hear from you the more responsive we can be. Finally,
in our last newsletter we announced the availability of our new
paper on 50
Great Tips for Using e-mail and Web Marketing. Dale Leatherwood
at Global
Knowledge wrote back with more and deeper tips. His tips are
so good that we've included them in this newsletter. Our 50 tips
were meant as a basic guide to e-mail and web-site marketing and
his response amplifies the basics. We are grateful for the time
and effort Dale spent on these responses and want to share them
with you. If you have similar information that you'd like to share
with our readers and us please let us know. We welcome feedback
and ideas! In the meantime, may you have a happy holiday season! Christine Sullivan President, Hawthorne Associates (978) 745-4878 Hawthorne Newsletter Archives:
Hawthorne Associates has provided marketing and public relations services to companies in the training, learning and knowledge management industries for more than a decade. Find out how we can help your company by calling (978) 745-4878, emailing chris@hawthorneassociates.com or visiting our web site at www.hawthornemedia.com |
 Reader Feedback on Hawthorne's 50 Tips for Using E-mail and Web MarketingLast
month we published a brief paper entitled "50
Great Tips For Using E-Mail And Web Marketing Effectively".
Dale Leatherwood of Global Knowledge wrote to us with some very
insightful additions and revisions to the tips pertaining to e-mail
marketing. Below are the 17 tips Hawthorne published about email
marketing. Mr. Leatherwood's comments and revisions (italicized)
follow each tip: 1. Include your URL in all e-mail correspondence coming from your company. DL -- Include the URL at least twice in your email, one of which within the first 2 paragraphs. If the recipients are interested in your offer from the very beginning don't make them wait until the end to act. [Hawthorne: This is an excellent suggestion to follow in creating an effective direct marketing email message.] 2.
Avoid Spam. Do not send e-mail to people who have not chosen to
join your e-mail list. Buying other's lists or using a partner's
e-mail list should also be done with the utmost care since the recipients
have not elected to join your list. 3. Use HTML mail. Offer your users the option to receive HTML-based e-mails, which can offer more attractive graphics and layout, resulting in a more effective impression. DL -- Use HTML wisely and simply. HTML is more effective, but note that complex HTML can be rendered useless depending on the email software. For example AOL version 6.0 or less, or online readers such as Earthlink's SpringMail system can garble HTML email. If you want complexity in the HTML, provide an additional option in a text line (e.g.- "Having trouble viewing this message? Click here for view online") 4. Avoid the hard sell in e-mail copy. When writing e-mail copy, don't use aggressive marketing language users will be reminded of spammers and ignore your message. Instead, be concise, clear, and assertive in delivering a message that they are interested in. Focus on the key benefits and your offer. DL -- First and foremost avoid the hard message in the subject line. The most effective emails are those that have direct but not "sales-y" subject lines and then get to the point in the body of the message. You're not fooling anyone into thinking you're in this for charity, but don't be crass about it. Be honest and to the point. 5. Target your e-mails as much as possible. Sending e-mail is cheap, so you should not be limited to just one standard letter to prospects and customers. If your services can be broken into several categories, create a newsletter for each. DL -- Be sure to target based on your CUSTOMER'S perspective, not on yours. Provide customers the option to choose the specific categories of interest in a newsletter or opt-in emails. Those categories should reflect the customer's methods of segmenting your products and services, but also be generic enough that you'll always have something to talk about in their category. If one of your products is training for the health care industry, then the category should be "Health Care Training and Certification" as opposed to "Security Training for HIPAA compliance." 6. Resist the temptation to send too much e-mail. Flooding customers' in-boxes is a big no-no. Mail once a month, at most. DL
-- If possible, let your customer decide how often to receive your
emails based on the type of message, and give them a reason to choose
frequency. For example: 7. Include an option to unsubscribe in every e-mail you send out. Do not put this option at the top of your message. Don't make it too easy for customers to leave your list. DL -- You don't want it at the top, but make sure that it's at the SAME place in each email. 8. Test your e-mails. Take advantage of the nominal costs and quick turn-around time of email to fine-tune your message by testing different messages on small subsets of your list. DL -- Make sure you test using controls and consistency. For example you don't want to test a new subject line and body copy in the same message. Also make sure that each test has an adequate sample size for meaningful results. 9. Suggest that recipients 'forward this email to a friend'. The sweet spot of viral marketing is in communications-based services (e-mail, invitations, etc.). These are some of the most contagious viral mechanisms because they are designed to spread a message among different users. DL -- Again, make sure that this is in a consistent place in your message and is a prominent feature illustrated with a common graphic/icon. 10. Personalize on both ends. When communicating with a customer via e-mail, say who it is from, and send it from a personal-looking e-mail address. DL -- Define the content by the From: line. The most important thing is for your recipients to know that this is your message so that they can skip your email when deleting the 50 or so SPAM messages in their inbox. An email from "ABC Company Training Tips" is much better than from "Jim Wilson" 11. Writing personal e-mails instead of form letters generates sales and referrals. DL -- This is true, but effective use of database fields and merge can turn any form letter into a personal email. 12. Create multiple direct e-mail campaigns and gauge each response rate. This is a low-cost way to research effective e-mail. DL -- Keep a spreadsheet that provides campaign description, date(s) delivered, list source, list cost, cost per name, tracking info, clicks for each tracker/list, clicks for each format (text vs. html), costs per click, extended results (orders, demos, appointments, etc.) 13. Keep the first paragraph short and grab your readers' attention right off the bat. DL -- Keep each paragraph short. If an email looks difficult to read at first glance, it won't be read. 3 sentences maximum per paragraph. The detail can be found on the web page you link to. 14. Use a testimonial that showcases your services DL -- Testimonials without a name, title and company look fake. When possible, get a full name and show their role and who they work for. DL -- Snappy subject lines should avoid words like FREE, WOW, exclamation points, Offer, and any other words that are obviously SPAM and will get filtered out. Remember to test your email subject lines against your company's own SPAM filters before you end up wasting too much time. 16.
Allow newsletter-type e-mails to be easily sent to friends. Click
here to send this to a DL -- Same as #9. Something that is helpful is the ability to record the name of the sender and receiver to analyze. But NEVER add the recipient to your opt-in list. If you do use a form to record the sender and receiver, then use a modified version of the email to allow the receiver to easily sign up. 17.
Time your e-mails. Either send them in the middle of the night,
so they will be read first DL -- Test your emails to determine the best time. Sending them around noon if you live on the West coast and your market includes an East Coast audience (or vice versa) doesn't make any sense. What you can do is look at your web logs. What time of day is the peak time for your site? That will tell you when to send. Also, don't send in the middle of the night on a Thursday or Weekend as Friday's and Mondays just aren't good days for email.
|
Phone: (978) 745-4878 | Fax: (978) 745-2553