Are You Doing Email Marketing The Right Way?

When it comes to email marketing, a lot of marketers usually like to focus on one thing.

The size of the list.

“How big is your list?” That’s the perennial favorite question of many.

And understandably so.

We all have an obsession about size.

You know. People say size matters. Maybe yea, for your spouse or lover. It does. At least for most.

When it comes to email marketing, while there is no doubt that size IS a major factor, however the more crucial question should be…

Is Your List Quality?

Yes. All else being equal, Quality should ALWAYS take precedence over QUANTITY.

Of course, having both quality and quantity is the ideal case.

Unfortunately in life, things are often not as ideal as we want, don’t you think so?

Why I emphasize about quantity is because for whatever marketing dollar we invest, we have to aim for the highest possible return of investment.

We want to be effective and efficient in our marketing.

Having said that, here are several issues for you – the email marketer – to seriously ponder…

• Do you talk often to your subscribers?
• Do you offer value to them?
• Do they respond to you?
• Did they opt in to your list in a permission based manner?
• Did you do a double opt in for your list?
• Have they ever bought from you?
• Do you have a consistently high open rate and click through rate?
• Do you have a low unsubscribe rate?
• Do you get few or zero spam complaints?

If the answers to all are yes, then you should give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back.

Well done. And keep it up. That’s the way to go.

In fact for the last point I mentioned, if you can consistently maintain a high click-through rate AND conversion rate, your profits are gonna seriously FLY!

Let Me Share With You My Own Experience

I help a good friend of mine, together with another good friend (yes, I have many friends =) !), who is a stock investor maintain his list. This list pertains to the investment niche.

As we only recently set it up, the list size is very small. Minuscule in fact. About 71 subscribers.

What we do is that we constantly talk to the subscribers. We shared freely. Built a relationship with them. Make them feel like we are friends to them. No different from you and me.

Soon, there is the “TRUST” factor being established there – a major component for marketing success.

You can take a look at the email statistics below when we sent out a broadcast message. 95.8% open rate and 42.3% click through. Not bad even if I do say so myself!

By the way, the broadcast message was for a meet up to a sharing session. We did the email copy as we usually would. Sold them the benefits of attending. Place some limitations to induce urgency and so on…

Okay, so here’s what eventually happened…

Well, obviously the copy must have worked. Our relationship definitely have played a part too. Cos you know what…?

More than 100 people signed up for the sharing session even though we only had 71 people in the list. So there were some of these people must have told someone!

Ahhh….the power of word of mouth marketing.

And we haven’t even got started!

So there you have it. E-mail marketing can be potent – if done the right way.

Did you do yours the way it should be?

All Success,

[tags]Email marketing, E-MoneyMarketing, open rate, click through rate, conversion rate, word of mouth, online marketing, business[/tags]

You are right.

List size doesn’t equate good. We are always looking for best conversion.

Quality is undoubtedly very very important.

Good post!

Tez

I have to agree on this one…A few months ago I ‘cleaned’ my list and let them optin once more. From the +4500 addresses I had in that list, only 248 subscribed again. The conversion ratio of that small (very focussed & interested) group went from 3% (when having +4500 ) to 15% and I almost doubled my average income for that list because I was able to sell them higher end products.

Hi Dave,

Wonderful!

It’s better to clear all the deadweights, focus on the best, and built up from there.

Great to hear your account!

Cheers,
Jag

Nice post. I am agree with you. Quality is very important.

Hi Honda,

Quality is important. Indeed!

IF have quality plus quantity – that is unbeatable!

Cheers,
Jag

Really right. We should keep in mind about the Quality. it is the main thing.

Yep. Quality over quantity – always!

Jag

Yeah, I agree as well. You might have a long list but is the people in the list all interested in your niche marketing that you are promoting. Best way is using conversion rate to find out how effective it is.

Hi Sock Yee,

Thanks for dropping me a line. Conversion rate is always a good measure.

Looking how frequent they respond to your emails is another.

Cheers,
Jag

Hi there, that was a good question indeed. I guess most of the companies out there are not playing well with the email marketing thing. I guess it should be done in not the spamming way. It is more than that. It should be somewhat legal . I recommend one great company with nice software for that. Please check out.

Email marketing company

Wow this is a great post indeed about email marketing. I gues the companies there that do the email thing do it well and correctly there are lot many legal aspects I guess about them. Please check out this company here that does the email marketing with so many goodie softwares.

Email marketing firm

This is obviously one great post! I agree that no matter how big or small your list is but if the people in your list is not interested in the niche marketing you are promoting, it would be still useless. What matters most is the quality of the list and how the people respond to it.

Aurelius Tjins last blog post..Are You Making These Seven Common Grammatical Errors?

You are absolutely right… yes i am interested in email marketing in right way. Thanks for nice and useful tutorial. I like it.

Chris Michael