Your Part in Stopping Email Spam – A Smart Marketing Approach

Email marketing is a very seductive tool for companies on tight budgets.  It is fast, it can access lots of potential customers with direct targeting and above all, it is cheap!  You buy the Magic List with tens of thousands of prospects, load them in your computer and press a button.  And “Bang!”, you have instant customers. What could be simpler than that?  But that kind of thinking is part of the “junk email” problem known as spam and not part of its solution.  And the problem has gotten so extreme, that your existing customers are not looking at your legitimate messages.  Here are a few ways you can make email marketing work for your company at the same time you cut down on email volume.

The Message - Ask Your Customers and Your CSR’s 

You’ve done your market research, either over a sandwich lunch or over a few hard weeks of strategy sessions.  But have you asked the two groups who probably know the most about your products and the marketplace?  Before you send your next marketing email message, meet with your customer service representatives and get their input.  Get their suggestions about asking a few of your better customers to give their input.  Find out from them whether this message tells the right story about your company and its products.  Ask the customers about the key decision points they made before purchasing your products and incorporate that information into the message. Your customers are a great focus group and your customer service representatives are a great resource.  Don’t forget to use them both.

Refine Your Audience

Rather than purchasing an email list “guaranteed to give you thousands of leads”, you may want to take a more definitive approach.  Know why your customers buy your products and what they use them for.  Then define the key points of demographic information – geography (zip code or other), age, income level, buying behavior, etc.  If you have ever engaged in promotional campaigns, analyze the messages and market piece(s) that have generated past responses.  Ask selected customers who should be the target audience for your campaign. 

All of this information will help you to refine the target audience.  THEN go looking for the best source for a mailing list.  TIP:  Some professional marketing firms can help you in this process for just a little more money that you would have spent buying the Magic List.

Know Your Company’s Follow-Up Limitations

Let’s say that the Magic List does provide you with thousands of leads, are you ready to handle that volume?  A true marketing campaign has many steps in its plan for success and the actual promotional piece, email or otherwise, is only the messenger.  Decide what are the goals for the campaign and know how you would handle the response volume.  Consider trying a test run or two to iron out any kinks.  Getting a lot of prospective customers and not being able to respond to their interest can hurt your company more than getting too few. 

Co-Marketing - Join Forces With An Industry Colleague

Some of the best marketing plans come from working with other industry members, especially those who have few points of direct competition.  Each of you know your customers, each of you know your products and there may be real strength in sharing that information.  If you decide to go forward with a joint promotion, each of you will save on some of the costs by sharing them.  This could be a win-win situation if you work carefully together through the process.

Know the Rules

Consider joining the Direct Marketers Association (DMA), even though you aren’t a direct marketer.  If your company is engaged in email marketing, it pays to know the issues – and the techniques.  A great deal of information is shared by the 4,700 DMA members and you can quickly learn by the experience of others.  The DMA can be accessed at www.the-dma.org.  It won’t hurt to know both the landscape and possible winning solutions from the leaders in the field. 

Being smart about using email (and any marketing medium) is simply good business.  And by doing so, your company won’t be adding to the spam problem.