By Richard Teasdale
At the DACS September 2014 general meeting, Ellen Williams gave us an overview of the advantages of using e-mail and social media for sales and marketing. Ellen, a regional development director for Constant Contact, is an expert on the subject.
Constant Contact, based in Waltham, Mass., is a software maker in the field of Contact Management, which includes E-mail marketing, Event registrations, Management of offers, deals, and promotions, and Online surveys.
With the help of information technology, marketing and sales are more focused now than they were in the past. Whereas “filling the pipeline” was once the goal, today’s marketing is much more precisely targeted to actual and potential customers. Ellen explained how a sophisticated marketing strategy emphasizes maintaining contact with customers instead of just inundating them with e-mails. A smart company uses good service to “wow” prospects and entice them to stay in touch, engaging them in a conversation. This is done through the use of e-mail and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
Social media have the potential to magnify the impact of a marketing message. When a Facebook user shares it, or a Twitter user re-tweets it, they are acting as an external sales force for the original sender and imparting social visibility to the marketer. E-mail and social media are really geared to growing a business.
Ellen described for us four essential elements of digital marketing: Getting Found, Engage & Nurture, Campaigns & Drive Action, and Analytics.
Getting Found means everything that enhances visibility and discoverability, e.g. having a website, using listing services, doing search engine optimization (SEO), and ensuring good visibility on mobile devices.
Engage & Nurture is the process of establishing a dialog with customers and prospects. It includes getting permission to engage with people by e-mail, in accordance with CAN-SPAM and CASL, and the creation of loyalty programs. (CAN-SPAM is the federal legislation, enacted in 2003, which established national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail. CASL is the equivalent law in Canada.)
Campaigns and Drive Action is the phase in which a marketing campaign is executed, using software tools of the type produced by Constant Contact.
Last but not least is Analytics, which measures the effectiveness of a campaign and enables it to be fine-tuned. Information includes what proportion of e-mails were read, and how many were “clicked through” to web pages. Marketers will want to refine their message as much as possible via e-mails and social media before making the financial commitment of going to print.
Ellen gave us a short tutorial on how to construct and send marketing e-mails. The highlights included:
- Many e-mails are sent in the form of a newsletter, which typically contains a logo, content, and links.
- Create good content by focusing on what you know that recipients don’t. Share expertise and provide links to good information.
- Less is more. More than 50% of e-mails are now opened on mobile devices – they must be short and to the point. The most important information should be in text. Put flyers and other images somewhere on the web and link to them. Mobile is critical.
- People do one of three things when they receive an e-mail: 1. read it immediately, or 2. save it to read later, or 3. delete it. The sender should aim for 1. because 2. is a “well-intentioned never”.
- People decide what to do based on who the e-mail is from and the contents of the subject line. Ensure that the sender is clearly recognizable. Ensure that your identity (branding & images) is consistent across platforms: e-mail and social media.
- In the subject line – follow the “222” rule: you have 2 seconds, in the first 2 words of the subject line, to entice people to read the e-mail today.
- When to send – recommendation: send to one third of recipients on each of three different days of the week. Look at the results. After the best day has been chosen, send the next mailing at three different times of day. Again look at the results to choose the best time of day.
- Identify links by underlining text instead of using buttons so that recipients recognize them as links. Remember that images get clicked on also, so make sure that they link to something. Put logos left of center because that’s where they are expected to be. Don’t make people hunt for the reason you sent them an e-mail, i.e. put your message high enough so that they don’t have to scroll down to read it. Also, don’t give them too many action choices. Test the mailing on yourself before sending it to the audience.
- Use Constant Contact or one of its competitors to help you adhere to these rules.
Ellen devoted much of the remainder of her talk to the value of using social media for marketing purposes and recommendations for how to use e-mail and social media together.
Online social media were used by 10% of people in 2008. Last year (2013), it was 87%. People are looking for things on social media. Your competitors are on social media. If you’re not using social media, you’re missing out on an opportunity to communicate. The first users of social media were cave men. Their drawings taught others things like: “I can kill this, using this tool, over here.”. The audience “re-tweeted” by drawing the same message for others. Your customers’ friends are your next great prospects. Social media sharing takes advantage of this rule because the essence of it is the sharing of information.
Ellen taught us to re-purpose and re-use content. We don’t have to come up with new things all the time. So long as we’re there regularly, people will begin to expect us again. Consistency is important with social media.
A quick overview of the important social media platforms from a marketing perspective:
- Pictures are useful forms of social media and can be very powerful. Although Instagram and Pinterest were designed to focus on pictures, other platforms, e.g. Facebook, can often have more impact with pictures than with words.
- Most Google+ users are “techies”. Google+ has much functionality that helps with SEO.
- Facebook is popular mostly for personal use but a Facebook business page can be very successful if it has a communication style and content that doesn’t disrupt the personal news feed. As with all the platforms, it’s all about building a community around what you have to say.
- LinkedIn is strictly professional and is great for building online resumes.
- Twitter is very quick information that goes by very fast. Mutual following opens up doorways for private conversations. Hashtags are very useful, e.g. they allow Twitter to emulate chat rooms. The basic elements are a time, a day, and a topic. e.g. one could use a hashtag of “DACSQA” on Fridays at 3:00pm. Users who put that hashtag in their posts will see all other communications with the same hashtag. So one person could answer questions posted by others about the chosen topic. This so-called “Twitter Chat” is very popular.
- Pinterest is a very popular vehicle for retail information because links to e-commerce websites can be made directly from posted images.
So what are the next steps in social media marketing? Amplify the impact of your e-mails by using them together with social media. e.g. if distributing a newsletter, post it on social media and use a link in the e-mail to access it there. This approach broadens the audience by allowing the newsletter to be accessed by people who follow you on social media, as well as by those to whom you sent the e-mail. It also deepens the audience because social media users tend to follow your posts more frequently than you send them e-mails.
Constant Contact offers many tools, including third-party apps, to help with the combined use of e-mails and social media. Lots of how-to information is available online via Constant Contact’s blogs and videos – you don’t have to be a customer to use these. A 60-day free trial is available, which is full-featured except that there is no ability to send to large lists. Pricing is based on the number of names on the list of contacts. Non-profits get the same product as everyone else but with discounts.
Ellen concluded the presentation with a question and answer session about Constant Contact.
The post E-mail & Social Media Marketing appeared first on Danbury Area Computer Society.
