Welcome to the Escape Blog

I took part in this e-mail marketing report from E-Consultancy recently and am not surprised about the findings. The highlights of which are:

1. Companies are spending 20% of their marketing budget on e-mail marketing.
2. 4 out of 5 e-mail marketers admit that they are not using it as effectively as they could.
3. Almost 50% of email marketers do not know their companies Return on Investment from e-mail marketing.

The thing is, in my little opinion, that people are still thinking quick and easy wins. They want to buy a database, send a loose generic e-shot that just ‘gets there’. They will no doubt have some results but imagine how successful your campaign could be.

We recently did an e-mail campaign (business to consumer), based on segmented data to a specific target base of 361 people that yielded:

• 70.18% unique HTML opens
• 34.58% click through rate
• 60% sale of limited (but specific) inventory

Wow! we wish every one was like that. They’re not, I can admit to that but why was this one so successful?

The secret is this:

• The database is permission-based. ie. People have opted into receiving the marketing information. It has taken three years to build the whole database but wonder about that asset of willing potential customers and ongoing marketing opportunities.
• When they subscribed, they were given the choice to check a box against specific selections: In this case it was artists that they are specifically interested in buying pieces of work from.
• The e-mail messages that they receive are regular and welcome and the recipient is always given the option to unsubscribe. This has built trust over time, which gets stronger, leaving the interested people and allowing other to leave.
• This specific e-mail message (as reported on above) was therefore for them; personalised and about something (a specific artist) that they have a great interest in, from someone they know and trust. Therefore, the penetration is that much more effective.

What Should You Not Do?

• Assume that people (your customers and prospects) give a damn about you.
• Lazily send an e-shot, either BCC’ing or sending graphics - it is very invasive of someone’s privacy.
• Buy an e-mail list in (my explicit beliefs - not The Escapes as a whole). I personally think this is not a quality way to build a list. I have seen a bought in list get results and I don’t see them as getting quality results.
• Don’t allow people to un-subscribe from your e-mail list AND following this up by actually doing it. Most systems allow for this automatically as a matter of course (see footer).

It’s not really a secret!

Read (and digest) this book "Permission Marketing" first and then start using this product - Campaign Monitor).

If you don’t fancy doing it yourself, give us a shout if you are UK based.