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How to leverage the power of e-mail marketing

By Henry DeVries

There is no more cost-effective way to reach the individual customers than with e-mail. While a response rate of 2 percent might be considered good for direct mail, many e-mail marketing campaigns are reporting response rates of up to 40 percent.

With e-mail marketing you can benefit from a level of selling that is unavailable in the direct mail world. The key is the opt-in approach, in which prospects give their permission for you to contact them with offers.

Here are 10 ways to leverage the power of e-mail:

  1. Build a permissible e-mail list of prospects who would like to receive more information about your product or service.
  2. Diligently collect e-mail addresses during all your lead-gathering efforts, including trade shows and telemarketing.
  3. Embed links to a merchandising Web site in your e-mails, giving you an instantaneous fulfillment package online.
  4. Avoid e-mail clutter by customizing. By extracting specific information from your customer database, you have the ability to construct personalized messages for each reader.
  5. Test, test, test your e-mails. You can test headlines, offers and lists in a fraction of the time is takes to test traditional direct mail.
  6. Research the best resources for e-marketing outsourcing support.
  7. Reinforce customer purchase behavior by communicating after the sale via e-mail.
  8. Cross-sell and up-sell customers through the use of database information and targeted e-mails.
  9. Conduct market research using your e-mail audience of prospects.
  10. Remember the golden rule of marketing: communicate to prospects in the way they want to be communicated to. For best results, combine e-mail with traditional direct mail.

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