Are We Ready to Open? Email has the potential as a cost-

Are We Ready to Open?
    Many professionals and enterprises have not yet realized the email potential as a cost-efficient and effective marketing stream. Others use email but in a wrong way, loosing the chance to increase customer loyalty, branding, and their prospect base through spending some cents each recipient.
    [1] Proper planning is the key to successful email campaigns. Today I will try to take you through the many factors that you should keep in mind when planning your campaigns — [2] whether you are an expert or a beginner, you can use these general guidelines to keep you on the right track.
Where to Begin
    [4] Let’s consider that you have decided to use arguably one of the most powerful marketing tools available to get your message across to your target market.
    Email campaigns are a highly effective, low-cost medium that gets immediate responses. [3] The beauty of email is that responses are typically generated within 48-72 hours, so the effectiveness of a campaign is known quickly, as opposed to several months for a direct mail or advertising campaign.
    Email campaigns are ideal for a variety of purposes, including increasing sales, building branding awareness, up selling, cross selling, and improving your relationship with your customers. You’re probably already familiar with the benefits of email campaigns, which is why you are ready to begin an email campaign of your own.
    Regardless of the end-result you desire, there are some guidelines that you should follow when planning your campaign. The following roadmap will keep you on track towards a future of successful email campaigns.
Determine the Goals of Your Campaign
    You may know that you want recipients to download your datasheet, but do you have a number in mind? Do you have a sales goal? Do you want a certain number of individuals to sign up for your newsletter? Decide what you feel would make a successful campaign as a benchmark for your efforts. [5] Having solid but realistic goals in mind will make it much easier for you to determine if your campaign was a success.
    In many cases, the goals you set may be exceeded. [6] In others, maybe not, but they may uncover new goals for future mailings. For example, you may have initially wanted your recipients to download a whitepaper from your website. Instead of clicking on the URL to download the whitepaper, more recipients may have opted to sign up for the newsletter you are offering.
    As a result of this mailing, you may want to create specialized content in your newsletter that will promote your whitepaper. Or alternately, you may want to revisit the copy you used to describe the whitepaper, or even more simply, change the name of your Whitepaper to make it more enticing.
[7] Determine Your Target Market
    Who exactly are you trying to reach? This, along with your call to action, can be one of the most important aspects of your campaign. Think long and hard about the demographic you are trying to reach, because if you start a campaign not knowing this, you will miss a key ingredient for the rest of your planning. Not only will it shape the type of message you send, it will also shape your call to action, the list segments you choose, and ultimately, the campaign’s success.
Determine Your (’all(s) to Action
    [8] What exactly do you want those who receive your email to do? Should the ultimate action be to:
    Buy a product?
    Cross-sell or up-sell other products or services?
    Encourage individuals to register on your site?
    Encourage individuals to sign up for a new newsletter you are offering?
    Visit a specific web page?
    You may also merely be trying to build a solid relationship with the individual, for which email is an excellent tool, but is harder to quantify. Determining your call to action will ultimately help you to determine the success of your campaign, so you will want to focus on this early in the planning process.
Develop Your Privacy Policy
    We’ll keep this short and sweet. Recipients will be much more responsive (and happier) if you are very clear about how you got their email address, how you will be using it, and how they can unsubscribe from your email list. Briefly explain your privacy policy within the context of your message, and place a link to your full privacy policy in all communications, right next to the unsubscribe link.
     [9] By providing a way for recipients to opt-out of future mailings, you are being a responsible email marketer and will have much happier readers. I advise you to make this process as painless and easy as possible.
Choose Your List
    Mailing to the appropriate individuals is of the utmost importance. If you have an in-house list that you will be mailing to, you are ahead of the game on two counts. You know that your audience will recognize you (since they have already given you permission to send them correspondence from you) and you will avoid the possibility of high costs that come with renting a high-quality opt-in list.
    If you don’t have an in-house list to mail to, you can contact a list broker who can help you to choose the appropriate lists for your mailing.
Should You Start (Re)Considering Your Marketing Channels?
    [10] I believe that the adoption of email as a marketing channel for enterprises is less than 5 percent in most of the countries, except USA, Canada and UK. It is also obvious that [10] this new marketing approach could become one of your stronger allies in the way to make your marketing budget worth every cent. Including this new channel in your marketing plan is the easy thing. What is the hard issue for every marketer today is to make it work efficiently and get it aligned with the rest of your channels, succeeding the best marketing mix to fulfill your business goals.