Half-Baked E-Mail
If you are serious about adding e-mail to your marketing mix,
you should take e-mail seriously enough to develop a plan for
it. Too many organizations launch a half-baked e-mail program
and then are disappointed when it doesn’t live up to
expectations.
The plan does not have to be as long as War And Peace, but it
must include a few key elements so that you can develop a
focused, targeted, measurable program that gets results. At a
minimum, here are the elements that I recommend:
• Objectives
• Audience Definition
• Key Messages
• Format
• Tactics
• Timeline
• Budget
• Measurement
First, determine what is it that you want the e-mail program to
achieve from marketing and communications perspectives. Is this
a newsletter designed for relationship management purposes, or
is it a sales-oriented vehicle? Are you trying to build
awareness, generate leads, increase web traffic, encourage
loyalty, or close sales?
Next, you need to define audiences. Who are you trying to reach?
What do you know about them from demographic and psychographic
perspectives? Are you addressing multiple audiences? If so, do
you need to segment your audiences and develop e-mails with
different messages? How will each audience profit from our
communications.
Now, what is it you want to say to each audience? What’s the
nature of the content? Will this include just editorial
information or will it also contain some sales-oriented
material?
Closely tied to messages is your format. Are you producing a
newsletter with a lot of editorial material, or does it contain
just brief snippets of information? Is it an announcement list,
a discussion list, or just commercial messages? Think about your
audiences as you develop the most appropriate format.
Your tactics section lays out tasks and who is responsible for
them. What technology do you need? Do you have in-house e-mail
capabilities or should you use an application such as nTarget
(www.ntarget.com)? How will you build and manage your list? How
will you acquire new subscribers? Who will create content,
design and distribute the e-mail?
After you answer those questions, it’s time to turn to your
timeline. Develop a schedule for having your technology in
place, building your list, creating content, designing and
distributing the e-mail. Determine if this will be a one-time
mailing, or if it will recur on a weekly or monthly basis.
Your budget may help you answer many of the questions above.
Small budgets may mean you complete a lot of the work in-house.
Finally, it’s time to establish criteria for measuring the
program. An awareness program may call for some baseline
research so you’ll know how you are doing. A relationship
management program may measure customer retention. Increased
click-through from your e-mail to your website is also a
measurable element. Sales-oriented programs might measure total
sales from e-mail, or incremental sales increases with
individual customers.
No matter what your objective in using e-mail, spend a little
time cooking up a plan so your results won’t be half-baked.
