Strategic eMail Marketing Course for your Business

Strategic eMail Marketing Course Despite being a extremely efficient and cost effective way to communicate with (potential) customers, email as a marketing medium has fallen out of favour with many online marketers - mainly due to huge amounts of spam mail being sent every day. Fortunately spam filters now help to clean up the clutter. However, this requires the new strategies to ensure that your email marketing message not only reaches the reader but also instils the desired response.

In this one-day course we examine the strengths and weaknesses of current 'permission-based strategies', see how they fit with established direct marketing models like Relationship Marketing - and survey best practice. With best practice examples and hands-on interactive exercises, this course addresses the opportunities and challenges of integrating email into your overall marketing strategy, takes you through the practical issues involved in planning and implementing an email campaign, and gives you a five step structure for planning your own campaign design.

Click here to contact us for a custom tailored training plan now.

Who will benefit from this Course?

Marketers, marketing communications personnel, direct marketers, sales professionals, new media managers and anyone who has responsibility for planning and running marketing campaigns that involve email communications.

You will understand how email can be used to gain, keep and develop customers, the choices involved in following a permission strategy and how email fits in with your online and offline communications mix. You will know how to plan and implement an effective email campaign, how to measure results, and have a context within which to assess and analyse the campaign.

Click here to contact us for a custom tailored training plan now.

Course Topics and Content

Email as Part of Your Marketing Strategy
  • email as a marketing medium
  • Qualities of the medium: instant, flexible, measurable
  • How email enables personalisation of information, content and delivery
Email and Permission Marketing
  • How new is Permission Marketing?
  • Implications for your marketing strategy of committing to a 'permission' model
The Regulatory Background
  • The 'opt-in versus opt-out' debate
  • Data protection issues, privacy and security implications of email
  • What does the EU privacy directive mean for your marketing plans?
  • Global Best Practice in email Marketing
The Planning Stage
  • What expectations should you have for your campaign? Setting realistic goals
  • What resources should you expect to commit?
  • Time frame and testing - how the instantaneous nature of email response shortens marketing cycles
  • 'Test and test again'
How to Target the Online Users You Want
  • Using interest-based targeting models to identify online markets
  • Let the prospects identify themselves
List Provision
  • Renting or buying email lists: rates, list sources, opt-in lists, dealing with email list suppliers
  • Growing your own - using and enhancing in-house data
  • Building a targeted email database
Winning Creative Strategies for email
  • Defining your 'excuse to contact' - How users draw the line between information and spam
  • What gives the best incentive to email response?
  • Viral campaigns - factors that make for maximum pass-on-ability
  • Personalisation - how many different messages?
  • Plain text versus HTML
  • How writing for email differs from writing for print
  • 'Microwriting': create compelling headlines and subject lines
  • Netiquette - 10 common mistakes and how to avoid them
Formatting email Messages For Maximum Effectiveness
  • What to write emails with: text editors and other resources
  • Anatomy of an email: The "From:" field * Subject line* The "To:" field * Controlling line length * Inline links * Unsubscribes * Signature (.sig file) * Attachments * Streaming content
  • Email formats: Newsletters, announcements, alerts, newsgroup digests, etc.
  • Using ASCII characters and 'emoticons' in plain text emails

 
Email Hosting and Management
  • In-house or out-sourcing?
  • Remote hosting services
  • Choosing Software
  • Automated response mechanisms
  • Data collection and tracking
  • Dealing with bounce backs
  • Filters and list management
  • Liaising with your ISP
  • Timing an 'email-out': time of day, day of week, stage of the campaign
Response Handling
  • Using flow control to stagger activity spikes - how not to crash your server!
  • Remote hosting services
  • Structuring the user experience
  • Making your Website work together with your email marketing to maximize customer conversion and re-visits
  • Designing arrival pages
  • Using surveys, sweepstakes, prizes and more
Measuring and Analysing Results
  • Building response and measurement tools into your emails
  • Analysing click-throughs and Web stats
  • Evaluating and continuously improving the campaign
  • Building in feedback loops
Your Five Step email Marketing Plan Checklist
STEP 1 - Understand Campaign Aims/Goals/Objectives
STEP 2 - Choose Target Recipients
STEP 3 - Create the Messages
STEP 4 - Send the Messages
STEP 5 - Evaluate the Campaign, Make Improvements