By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: E-marketing, e-shotting, e-casts, call it what you want, this form of marketing activity is one of the most widely used methods for pushing brand and promotional messaging.
It is pivotal to integrated marketing campaigns and serves as a method to not only promote product but also enrich customer communication and improve sales. There are huge advantages to using e-marketing as it is comparatively low cost, your reach can be as targeted or as broad as is appropriate and analysis is instant. The downsides are that all of us are bombarded by e-shots on a daily basis and therefore bin many of them without a second glance.
The key to successful e-marketing is to entice the recipient to open the mail, read it and then act upon it. This may seem obvious but with so many other distractions competing for our attention, these three actions need to be backed by powerful messages. Research shows 144 billion emails were sent every day last year and 69 per cent were treated as spam so the first lesson here is have a compelling subject line that does not use words that automatically get flagged as spam such as 'free' and 'win'.
A clear call to action, positioned correctly, is vital so make sure you are yourself clear on what you are hoping to achieve as a result of your e-shot activity and check that you have plainly conveyed this in your message. Landing pages are especially important if your call to action is targeted or product specific so make sure you have not overlooked this extra element of your campaign before you press the send button.
And lastly don't forget the boring bits. It is vital that you have a clear unsubscribe process that is correctly managed. Failure to do so could not only cost you money but your team will receive annoying phone calls from Mr Angry demanding to speak to you.