1. Email Marketing Workshop
10 October 2012
Merton Means Business Is a Merton Council service managed by Merton Chamber of Commerce

2. Email Marketing
•Email Marketing strikes many as old-fashioned
•More fashionable venues like social media and mobile marketing get all
the attention ???
•reality doesn’t agree. In fact, with a strong content marketing approach, email is
more powerful than ever thanks to social media.
•Why? Because it moves the conversation about your business or information
product to a more personal environment — the in-box.
•
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3. Email Marketing – What are the
Benefits
• It reminds your users about you
• it can inform users about new products or services
• it can tell them what you have been up to
• it helps you build a unique relationship with them
•It‟s extremely cost effective
Users like email newsletters if the newsletters bring them value.
•
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4. Benefits
•Repetition
• Prospects need to see emails around 3 times before they start
interacting.
•Name Recognition
• Great way to build your Brand, build up trust and recognise you as
expert in that field.
•Trust
• Building loyal customers means repeat buyers of your product/
service.
•Feedback
• Get valuable feedback from your readers
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5. Your email marketing campaign
Step 1: Define Your Readers
Example: Storm wants to gain more recognition in their industry
- Come up with your own
•What are their readers looking for?
• Information about online marketing trends
• Research in the market gathered from consumer research
• Industry news and gossip
• Latest products and services
•
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6. Step 2: Determine your Purpose
•Why does this audience want to hear from me?
•What useful information can I provide to this audience
•What do I want to accomplish with my email marketing
•Defining these questions will determine the content on your e-newsletter
The purpose of Storm‟s e-newsletter is to report on marketing news, trends and research and to promote their own
products and services
•
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7. Step 3: Outline your Goals
•Do you want to increase subscribers in the first year?
•Do you want to increase click-rates and traffic to your site?
•Do you want to increase sales or repeat sales?
Brainstorm what you hope to get out of email marketing over the next
6 months
Write down these 3 things;
1. Your Goal
2. How you‟ll achieve your goal
3. How you‟ll measure your goal
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8. Step 3: Outline your Goals ..Cont
Example; Storm’s goals could be:
1. Increase list size by 20% over the next year
2. Achieve goal by marketing the newsletter at all industry events and
conferences. Making newsletter signup form available at events and on
website, social sites, etc.
3. Measure success by analysing subscriber list reports.
•
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9. Step 4: Determine Frequency
•What frequency makes sense for your audience
• Monthly is a good start, but don‟t feel the need to commit to that to
start with.
•You don‟t want to go too long without contact as you don‟t want your
subscribers to forget about you
•You don‟t want to send too frequently either as this may make your
subscribers feel „overloaded‟
•Your specific product or service may also determine you sending times and
frequency. i.e. (monthly/weekly discounts, new product or service, general
market information, seasonal)
•
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10. Step 5: Create a Timeline
Here‟s an example of steps you might include in your Timeline
•Day 1: Write down the topics you want to include, and some ideas for
images.
•Day 2: Write out what you want to say about each topic, and pull the
pictures you want to use into one folder on your computer.
•Day 3: Create the email campaign in your newsletter program. Test it and
send it to yourself and a colleague who could read over the email and check
for errors and typos.
•Day 4: Send your campaign
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11. Which came first: Chicken or Egg?
•You need subscribers!
•Tell users what they will get
•Keep this process easy and intuitive as
possible
•Not too many fields
•All you really need is email address, and
possibly their name for personalisation.
Merton Means Business Is a Merton Council service managed by Merton Chamber of Commerce

12. Who Should be on your list?
•You may find you need multiple lists
•Existing customers
•Potential customers
•Have bought from you before
•Have not bought from you before
•
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13. How to build your list?
•Must be permission based marketing
• Ie: they have opted in, or you know they want to receive your emails
•Existing clients
• Great way to keep in touch
•Prospective clients
• People you have met or have been referred on to you as leads and
you feel you could offer some value to.
•Your website
•Networking events
•Last resort!!! – Buying a list – not recommended
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14. Good Signup Example
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15. Subject Lines
No matter how big your brand, people are not sat waiting for your newsletter.
Yet subject lines like these pop up every day:
•June‟s newsletter
•Weekly alert 9 May
•Offers of the week
Try a more enticing subject line, like these ones that suggest the content is
bite-sized and interesting:
•Five French films everyone should see
•The best of independent breweries
•Avoid unhelpful subject lines like this one from TFL “New travel information”
•Change to “Will the Olympics affect your travel?”
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•

16. E-Newsletter Quick Wins
•Keep subject headings fewer than 35 characters and make them inciting and
to the point.
•The majority of your key messaging should appear within one screen
Common spam sins to avoid:
• WRITING IN ALL CAPS
• Using too much punctuation!!!
• **Using $pecial characters**
• Not naming the person you're writing to (e.g. Dear Customer instead of
Dear Mr. Simpson)
• Hyperlinking the words Click here (a big mistake to make on a website
too!)
•
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.

17. Wording – Call to Actions
Whether a standalone text link or text on a button, words drive action. And the
right words drive more actions.
•“You should follow me on Twitter here” increased CTR by over 75% when
compared with “Follow me on Twitter”.
•When ESP Campaign Monitor sent out a customer survey by email, the link
text “Tell us what we can do better” scored 51% more clicks than “Give us
your best Campaign Monitor ideas!”
•Obox reported a 200% increase in sales after changing their button CTA
from “Visit our theme shop” to “See Options and Pricing”.
•Soocial added the words “it‟s free” next to the main CTA button and
saw conversions rise 28%.
Merton Means Business Is a Merton Council service managed by Merton Chamber of Commerce
•

18. Email Newsletter Design
•Keep it Simple and Straight forward
•the average reader skims a newsletter for 51 seconds.
•People never read: they scan for content that is of interest to them.
So, don‟t overwhelm them by squeezing too much information on the
page.
•Make sure your content gets straight to the point, and write short
paragraphs and bullet points.
•Use clever call to actions and imagery
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19. Email Newsletter Design
Bad newsletter design
The main purpose of Flybe‟s newsletter
is to present an exclusive offer on family
trips to Disneyland. The value of this deal
is lost among the long paragraphs.
The message could be conveyed more
effectively in bullet points for quick
scanning.
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20. Sample of a good simple design!
•Main info in top left for maximum
Email program exposure
•Short description with image to
encourage click through to site
•End of newsletter call to action for
new product
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21. Practical Workshop Tasks
1. Determine email marketing campaign
2. Build subscriber form and gather subscribers
3. Determine content topics
4. Collect images
5. Create user friendly subject line
6. Build email newsletter template in MailChimp
7. Test Newsletter
8. Send Newsletter
9. Monitor Reports
•
Merton Means Business Is a Merton Council service managed by Merton Chamber of Commerce

22. Resources
• Newsletter Programs
• AWeber - very powerful - www.aweber.com/?402656
• iContact (30 Days Free Trial) – www.icontact.com/UK
• MailChimp (free for up to 2000 subscribers) – www.mailchimp.com
• Constant Contact - www.constantcontact.com/uk/index.jsp
• Content Sources
• Marketing Sherpa (search for great relevant articles)
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/#
• Mark Brownlow has posted hundreds of useful email-marketing
articles and links here. http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/
Merton Means Business Is a Merton Council service managed by Merton Chamber of Commerce

23. Thank you!
James Syme
Storm New Media Ltd.
Http://www.stormnewmedia.com
Email: james@stormnewmedia.com
Tel: 0208390 0100
Merton Means Business Is a Merton Council service managed by Merton Chamber of Commerce