Nov
1

By CommenceCRM

6 Steps for Crafting Effective Email Communication

E-Mail Marketing in 6 Easy Steps

For most people and businesses e-mail has become part of our daily lives, but the overwhelming number of e-mails we get each and every day has become a bit annoying. Why are we getting so many e-mails when there is little to no interest in the majority of them?  Well, here are some interesting facts about e-mail that may answer that question.

  • 212 billion business e-mails are exchanged every day.
  • 91% of people check their e-mail daily.
  • 51% check e-mail while on vacation and
  • 42% check e-mail while using the bathroom – not sure how the experts got this information.

While these are fun facts here is the one that makes all the difference. Sixty Six percent of people claim they have made a purchase generated by an e-mail they received. Now that is impressive and answers the question above as to why you receive so many.

Statistics show that E-mail marketing works. It is effective because it puts your company, your product, or your service in front of a large audience quickly and affordably. While there are other programs that you should consider as part of your marketing efforts such as pay per click marketing, listing services and social media sites these programs are passive in nature meaning someone must research your company or product to learn more about you.  E-mail marketing is an active process placing your value proposition directly in front of a target audience.

So, let’s talk about what is required to create a successful e-mail marketing program. There are six critical steps. I will discuss step one, two and three in this document and outline steps, four, five and six in part two of this white paper so come back to this site if you want to see them all.

Step 1:  Identity Your Target Market

Who is the ideal target for your product or service? Are they large, mid-size or small businesses> What specific industry or industries do you serve? Are you a regional or a global service provider? What other criteria is critical for identifying your target audience?   This is critical to the success of your program.

Step 2: Creating Your Value Proposition

This is more difficult than people often realize, but it is simply your elevator pitch. What do you deliver as a product or service better than anyone else and how are you going to communicate this to your target market? One way to help define this is to fully understand what your customers competing alternatives are and what there elevator pitch is.

Step 3:  Building Your Prospect List

Now that you have identified your target market and can clearly articulate your value proposition, you will need to build or acquire a filtered database of prospects to market to. If you are customer focused mainly selling add-on products and services you will already have a database of customers to market to, but for new business you will have to acquire a list from one of the list services that can properly match your prospect criteria.

Once you have completed steps one, two and three you are ready to begin building your campaign, establishing distribution timeframes and deciding how to monitor and measure the success of your program.

In our next post we will review steps four, five and six.

Archives