Top Ten Success Secrets of Email Marketing

Many would claim there are X secrets behind each web marketing channel – SEO, Affiliates, Email, etc. that will catipulate your business among the rest online today. While using the keyword of “secret” to attract your attention (ok, I’m also guilty of doing that in this post), the point taken is that there really are not any secrets (privately kept formulas / ingredients / methodologies, etc.) that marketers employ in their marketing, and especially email marketing. It’s simply a foundation of experience and knowledge that differentiates the marketer – or in this case the email marketers.

One of the latest white papers that’s come across my way worth mentioning is Larry Chase’s (Web Digest for Marketers) paper on the “Top Ten Success Secrets of Email Marketing“. Personally – it’s a good paper to read. It provides a basic overview for those getting started in attempting to monetize the email channel for their business. Unfortunatley it does miss some of the other core  essentials and foundation emarketers should employ in their direct marketing framework.

The paper discusses some of the commonly asks questions I come across when servicing business and marketing managers and dedicated client programs. This includes – building your target list, HTML vs. text. relevancy, frequency, content, design and a/b testing.

These are all good points clients or managers should be asking when developing an email campaign, though it does miss the indepth details of each, which is the bottom line of what will make or break the campaign. Then again – it is a top level understanding of creating an email campaign – but by no means a “secret” to email marketing. And while there are other areas missed in the email framework (ex. accredition methods), one core area missing is what KPI’s (key performance indicators) email marketers should consider before the campaign execution, and post. This is involves the marketing channel and business performance of the campaign. What impact did the campaign (email campaign delivery services)provide on sales? What lift did it give on the brand and vertical channels? What were the key indicators that either made, or broke, the campaign (subject line, offer, call-to-action, keywords, deliverability, etc.).

As email is a fast, inexpensive, and effective way to communicate with prospects, customers, and vendors, it’s the most cost effective channel in any retention / loyalty, acquistion / conversion programs in your customer lifecycle.

If there was one piece of advise I could offer all marketers when exploring the email channel as a silo in their program, or as an integrated channel in their campaign, is to keep top-of-mind in is relevancy (the right message), timing (at the right time), targetting (to the right individual).