CRITICAL Factors That Affect the Best Practices in Email Marketing

This article will discuss comprehensively the importance and the significance of effective and efficient email marketing. We will be discussing the crucial and critical aspects of a successful and powerful email marketing strategy in attaining high ratings in terms positive responses to email marketing campaigns and newsletter.
The email is a very powerful tool especially in attaining online business success as proven and illustrated based on the IBM software group. And based on the research conducted in 2003 the DM News reported that in the previous year, around 300,000 emails were distributed and sent by about 60 separate email marketing campaigns to existing and prospect customers, all of these recipients have been documented to have been registered at bibm.com
It appears in the result of the study that the response rates to the email campaigns forwarded to them have turned out to be significantly higher compared to the traditional method of sending direct emails. As what have been said by the Vice President of the Integrated Marketing Communications at the Software Group, Mark Rosven, that 1 & ½% is a typical expectation when it comes to the direct emails; and the 4.1% generated from the marketing is proven to have given a far better result as it is almost close to 3 times better than the traditional direct email. And because of this affirmative result, the IBM Software Group has now allotted about 15% of its budget to email marketing, newsletters, advertising, and other email marketing tools.
The success of email marketing may be attributed to diverse critical factors. CRITICAL is simply an acronym of all the basic components that should comprise a powerful and successful email marketing tool. By success, we mean achieving and attaining the goals and objectives that have been set for the email marketing campaign. The best determining criteria for SUCCESS would be if the campaign has delivered or surpassed the expected outcomes.
The success of the Email marketing campaign is basically gauged by the click-throughs, which is the number of recipients who actually follow and click the hyperlinks from the email to reach the business website; but what would count most is the overall success of the campaigns that can be achieved when these recipients actually take the follow-up actions and purchase the product or avail the services offered by the business site.
To be able to have a much clearer view of what CRITICAL is as the vital and essential components of successful email marketing, they will be briefly discussed below.
- CREATIVITY. This would most likely refer to the unique email design that comprises the artistic layout which includes images, fonts, and themes. In terms of creativity, some of the key factors that businesses also need to mull over are:
- Choosing between the HTML and the TEXT format. The format is very vital to the success of the email campaign; some audience would prefer one over the other because in some instances there would be some who would encounter difficulties displaying the HTML format.
- Structuring the Email. What's in question is the effectiveness of the 2 to 3 column structures and will it really be beneficial for the readers.
- Positioning the call-to-action buttons plays a really vital role so that potential clients would be easily compelled to hit the button. The strategic position would be somewhere in the page where it could be noticed right away.
- Branding the emails. The email campaign or the newsletter should represent the brand carried by the business and the variants of the brand should also be stated in the body of the campaign.
- RELEVANCE. This is essential in eliciting positive response rates from the email marketing campaign sent to targeted interested recipients.
The Quality of the content of the email marketing campaign is what makes it relevant. Having the message personalized, creative, informative and valuable makes it highly optimized thereby making your email marketing more effective.
In relation to this as one of the CRITICAL factors, your business should be able to accumulate all pertinent information regarding your target audience's profiles, preferences, and characteristics. Knowing what arouses people's curiosity, their hobbies and interests will also be beneficial for business owners because identifying suitable people to send the email campaigns would have a much better possibility of gaining a significant response.
Basically, when we speak of an email campaign being relevant, companies should basically focus more on the CONTENT, the AUDIENCE, and a catchy SUBJECT LINE. And significantly, new recipients must have an opt-in choice to voluntarily receive your emails unless otherwise they are already pre-existing clients of your business.
- INCENTIVES. This refers to offers, promos, discounts or freebies offered by the business sites especially to their new recipients. The campaign should clearly state what benefits or gains the recipient could take advantage when they decide to click the link. Some of the best examples that best describe this is the "Win", "Free", "Discounts" and save categories, whichever you promos fall in. Another important thing is that, making secondary offers make the basic offer much more dominant in attracting customers and generate viral referrals. Entice your recipients by encouraging them to make valuable referrals by persuading friends and contemporaries to click-in and contribute to the campaign, and through these they will have more gains.
- TIMING. This refers to the perfect and most suitable period when these email marketing campaigns should be sent to the listed recipients. When we say perfect time, we don't just refer to the time of the day; this should also include the day of the week, the month or the season of the year. Based on the recent studies, it is best to send these campaigns on Fridays and weekends as it has been proven that most people have time to check all other emails on these days of the week.

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