Making In-roads Through the Inbox
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Albers Director of Account Management Julie Swartz shares tips and best practices for your company’s email marketing strategy.
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Making In-roads Through the Inbox
- 1. Email Marketing: Making In-roads Through the Inbox To access the audio for today’s event, dial 1-866-740-1260 and enter code 2925553#
- 2. About Albers Communications Group • Full-service PR, digital marketing and communications agency • Specialize in integrated strategies • Represent clients in all 50 states and Canada • Create national and local market exposure
- 4. Today’s Topics • Relevance of email marketing • Who email marketing should target • Content that is email-worthy • Types of emails • Measuring success • Best practices • Questions and discussion
- 5. Relevance of Email Marketing • Showcase your experience • Reminds your audience you are there • Provides a personal connection • Allows you to see who’s reading your message • Drives traffic to your website
- 6. Target Audiences • Current clients • Prospective clients • Former clients
- 7. Mandatory Content • Social links • Links to your website • Links to outside content that supports your position • Contact information
- 8. Email-worthy Content • Industry trends • Company announcements • Breaking news • Gina – how about an image of the email announcing our silver anvil award to show Albers company announcement? Or sunco announcing upcoming bad weather? I will send you our award email
- 9. Types of Emails • Full stories • Jumped articles • Videos (gina – do we have a good video email to show) I will send you one from Constant Contact
- 10. Measuring Success • Open rates • Deliverability rates • Click-through rates
- 11. Best Practices • Mirror your brand • Develop an appropriate frequency • Determine the ideal time of day and best day(s) of the week
- 12. Examples
- 15. Albers Webinar Series Brands on (Digital) Film: Incorporating Video with Ann Hadfield Wednesday, March 18, 2015 @ 10 a.m. Register at www.alberscommunications.com/learning-opportunities
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for joining us today! Our webinar will begin at 10 a.m. central. Good morning everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar. My name is Julie Swartz, and I will be presenting today’s content. Before we get started, I’d like to cover a few administrative details. If you experience any technical problems on the call, please contact ReadyTalk customer service at (800) 843-9166. The presentation will take approximately 25 minutes – depending on the number of questions. The lines on today’s call have been muted to avoid any background noise, but you can use the chat function in the lower left side of your screen to chat in your questions throughout the webinar, and we will answer them at the end. We will be recording today’s webinar and sharing the link with you via email, in case you’d like to review it again or share it with others in your office. Now, I’m going to set up the webinar recording and then we’ll get started. Welcome to today’s webinar – Email Marketing: Making In-roads Through the Inbox.
- First, let me tell you a bit about Albers Communications Group. We are a full-service PR, digital marketing and communications agency headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. We strongly believe that PR and digital marketing go hand-in-hand and work best when used as part of an integrated communications strategy. We represent clients in all 50 states and Canada – where our PR and social media specialists help our clients achieve positive exposure nationally and locally in their operating markets. We have specialized expertise helping companies become leaders in their markets and their industries.
- Good morning, and thanks so much for joining us today for Email Marketing: Making In-roads Through the Inbox. My name is Julie Swartz and I am the Director of Account Management for Albers Communications Group. I oversee the digital marketing service that we provide for nearly 100 clients, a key component of which is email marketing.
- Here’s a look at the topics we’ll cover today. First, we will take a look at whether or not email marketing is still a relevant practice. Then we will dig in to who you should target in your email marketing efforts. Next, we will look at content that must be included in emails, and content that perhaps you should not include. We will identify the different types of emails, as well as how you can measure the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. And we will finish with some best practices for successful email marketing campaigns, and at the end, we’ll take time to answer the questions that have been chatted in. Throughout the presentation, please use the chat function on the lower left side of your screen to submit your questions.
- So why should you even do email marketing? Is this relevant – is it an effective use of your time? The answer is yes! An effective email strategy allows you to target your message to specific audiences and showcase your expertise – what you are good at, what makes you different than your competition or other organizations? Connecting with your audience keeps your business or organization at the forefront of people’s minds. There is a lot of competition for our attention, and you want your message to be heard. Making a personal connection with your audience through their inbox is a great way to keep you on the top of minds. Email is a great tool for that personal connection. It allows you to deliver a custom, targeted message to a specific audience, right to their inbox, mobile phone or tablet. A real advantage to an email strategy is that you can track who is receiving your emails. Are they opening your email, and then are they visiting your website from your email? Email can be a valuable tool in driving traffic to your website. Your business or organization more than likely has a website and a Facebook page, and perhaps even a Twitter page or a blog, but sometimes it can be difficult to know how to drive people to those properties. By linking directly to those spaces, and showing your audience the content they can find there, you can effectively drive traffic to those properties. And what is nice about that is you can track your analytics to show they arrived at your website because they clicked a link in your email.
- Who should you target in your email marketing strategy? The answer is everyone – current clients, prospective clients and your former clients. The message to each audience may be different, but that is the advantage of an in-depth email marketing strategy. Need to expand on this……. Because emails allow you to share important messages, you should encourage your recipients to share the emails by forwarding to others. By including an opt-in button – or join our mailing list – you can acquire new email addresses and expand your audience. It is important that you include only people who have opted in to receive your emails – you don’t want to spam your recipients with emails they aren’t interested in receiving. Your emails should include a convenient “unsubscribe” option so your recipients have the option of choosing to be removed form your list.
- There are a few things that each of your emails needs to include. As I mentioned earlier, emails can be excellent tool in helping you drive traffic to your website or to your social platforms – your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or blog – which is ultimately our goal. Linking to research, articles or other credible information that supports your position also lends legitimacy to your message. If you want to impact or change people’s behavior in some way – to buy your product, utilize your services, admire your work or visit your website – linking to outside content can be a great way to convince your audience. And of course every email should contain your contact information – make it easy for the recipient to contact you. Phone number, email, Facebook page, website, etc.
- So how do you know what is worth sharing with your audience. It’s important to share information that is interesting to your audience, and content that teaches them something they didn’t already know. Industry trends Sharing important news about your company can be an effective way of increasing your credibility among your audience. For example, we were excited to share the news of our recent Silver Anvil awards with everyone. We can post about it on our website and Facebook page, but emailing the news to everyone is one way to ensure they receive our news. We are proud of the work we do for our clients and we want to share the news! And breaking news that impacts your business………
- Measuring the effectiveness of your email strategy can be email because a good email platform will provide clear tracking information. For each email distribution you can track the open rate, deliverability rate, and the click-through rate. Gina – have you read anything recently that supports what good open rates, etc. are? I will research this if you don’t have anything recent – do you think we should get into specific rates? I would just say that open rates vary by industry, but the average open rate across all industries is 15%; however, our clients average more like 20 to even 40% or more open rates. An open rate tells you the percentage of your recipients that opened your email.
- Let’s spend a little time discussing some best practices for an effective email strategy. The design of your email is important – and it’s an opportunity to increase your brand awareness in a very visual way. The email template should include your company or organization logo, and the design should mirror the look of your website. Your look should be consistent. For a visual – does the Albers template match the website? Or should we showcase a client? You can use Albers. It’s important that you not overwhelm your recipients with emails. We all know what it is like to be bombarded with emails from a company or organization, and with too many emails we eventually tune them out all together. In fact most people get to a point where they just delete the messages without opening or reading them. Gina – what do you think – once or twice a month is ideal? I wouldn’t provide a specific recommendation…it’s not across the board. You can say that for our clients, we do communications as frequently as twice monthly or communications that are more spaced out, i.e. quarterly. It’s important to target your audience at the ideal time as well. Research shows that emails perform best when they are received at 10 am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. It isn't’ always possible to hit those times, however if possible you should try to incorporate these times and days into your strategy.
- I know you suggested Catholic Mutual and HISC – anyone else? Probably not if you’re going to use Albers on the previous slide
- Anything supposed to be here?
- Now that you’ve identified your strategy, it’s time to implement it. Before you dive in, here are a few things you should do first. Study best practices: There are many examples of strong communications strategies available online. See what type of approach other brands have taken, and get inspired. Understand your competitors. Are they deploying a content marketing strategy? If so, observe what they’re doing – then do it better. Develop a plan. This is the most important step, in our opinion. Put your goals and the steps you’ll take to achieve them into one document, and stick to it. Measure and analyze: When you build your plan, include the ways you’ll measure success. Then, at the conclusion of your campaign, see if you met your goals and figure out what lessons can be learned for the long-term.
- Before we get into questions, I would like to invite you to our next webinar – on Wednesday, March 18, 2015 at 10 a.m. Central, Video Production and Account Manager Ann Hadfield will be presenting “Brands on (Digital) Film: Incorporating Video” and will walk through some reasons why videos should be the next step in your marketing strategy. Again, that’s Wednesday, March 18 at 10 a.m. Central. You can register online at www.alberscommunications.com/learning-opportunities
- And one more housekeeping item – I’d like to ask each of you to take a few moments to fill out the questionnaire that will appear on your screen at the end of the presentation. Please provide your comments about today’s webinar or share topic suggestions you’d like us to address in future webinars. And now I will take a few moments to answer any questions that have been chatted in. If you haven’t done so already, please feel free to chat in your questions through the box on the lower left side of your screen. [After questions] Thank you for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the presentation. If you’d like to discuss these strategies or any other communications strategies for your business, please contact me.