Is email marketing dead?

Is email marketing dead

With all the buzz about social media, it's easy to ignore email in your online marketing mix. Is it worth spending your time writing an e-newsletter? Or should we just spend our time updating Twitter and Facebook?

The answer is a resounding yes, and like so many things in online marketing it works even better when combined with social media. A recent survey of 500 million emails found a threefold improvement in click throughs when social media sharing links were included in email newsletters.

So we thought we would share a few tips for successful email marketing.

Be focused

It's very tempting, as it's so cheap and easy, to send to everyone on your mailing list. But don't! Segregate your mailing list to those for whom it's most relevant, and write in a way that will appeal to them rather than generically. Not only will this improve response but it will also decrease the risk of "overload" by recipients receiving way too many emails from you, many of which they find completely irrelevant, causing them to add you to their spam list.

Have clear calls to action

What are you wanting to achieve from your email campaign? Make sure that the email you're sending makes the response you're looking for easy to achieve.

Work alongside your social media

Writing an article in your newsletter, make sure that your recipients can comment on your blog or Facebook discussions. Can they share the article from your newsletter with friends on their social network, do you always feature buttons to allow recipients to become fans or followers? Considering all of these things when putting together your email will improve the success of both your email and your social media campaign.

Build relationships and prove expertise, don't just sell

Don't just use your email to hard sell your latest product, email is great for building relationship and especially for proving expertise. Providing great content not only proves your expertise in your industry, but also increases the chance of your email being forwarded on and kept for future reference.

Test, test, test

If checking your website across different browsers causes you headaches, it's nothing to checking the appearance of your email newsletter, especially since Office 2007. Check out the email standards project website for more information. So make sure you check your email's appearance in as many viewing platforms as possible including web based email. Also, as with any marketing, test different subject lines and content, both to reduce the risk of being spam blocked and improve open rates.

I hope these tips have reignited your enthusiasm for email marketing. If you need help getting an email marketing campaign off the ground, or to improve the performance of what you're doing now, give us a call.

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August 18, 2010 at 10:11 pm | Design, Social Media | No comment

Challenge yourself

Do you like challenges? I love them, I enjoy the chance to stretch myself, pushing myself a bit harder. It could be creatively - making a client stand out from the crowd. It could be technically - developing a website that pushes the boundaries of what's possible.

The bike for the big challenge

However, next week it's not a client who's setting me a big challenge, but myself and it's my legs being challenged not my brain. I've always enjoyed cycling, but the last few years I haven't kept up the training, so to get myself back into shape I set myself the big challenge of cycling round the North coast of Scotland. My Dad's joining me (who hasn't let himself get out of shape) and we'll be cycling around 400 miles over some pretty hilly terrain. If you want to give us a bit of extra encouragement you can sponsor us via JustGiving.

So how does Real Point's skill set fit into this? We've set up a blog for the ride which makes use of several social media services. We're also using an iPhone app, Cyclemeter, which allows us to live update our Twitter feed with our progress. We plan to use the iPhone to update all aspects of the blog while we're on the ride - from taking photos and uploading straight to our Flickr feed, updating the blog using the WordPress app, keeping followers up to date with Tweetdeck, which allows us to quickly up date Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

So if you've got a big challenge, why not see if the creativity at the Real Point office can help you? And if you want to know more about effective use of social media on the move, just give us a call.

But most importantly - what big challenge are you going to set yourself?

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May 31, 2010 at 9:51 pm | Design, General, Social Media | No comment

Twitter at work

Many people see Twitter and other social media services as time wasters, still unsure of their benefit in the real world. But as Donato, Vankilter and myself can all testify, it works in the real world.

I met Andy, from Vankilter, a little while ago at the Solihull Business Breakfast, but as so often happens never got round to doing anything about seeing him to get the Kilt I wanted.

The other day, Donato, a business friend and avid Twitter user was at his shop and posted a picture of the kilts there. This prompted me to answer saying "I keep meaning to get a kilt", a few messages later and Andy phoned me, resulting in my visit to his shop and a kilt on order (Donato has also posted about this)

So next time someone asks, "why are you wasting your time on Twitter", answer "Because you never know just who might be interested".

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February 15, 2010 at 9:30 am | General, Social Media | No comment

The Price of Free - BBC Virtual Revolution

Another interesting episode of BBC's Virtual Revolution, interesting not because I learnt a great deal, but because it shows again how polarised opinion can be. As I enjoyed the ability to engage in debate and comment through twitter as I watched the programme, it demonstrated that some:

  • Are happy to make the trade - free services for my personal information (I happily stake my claim here)
  • Are nervous about who holds the information, and in to whose hands it will fall
  • Are blissfully unaware of just how much information is being collated and how it is being used

It is this last group that perhaps most concern me. As our use of digital services increase, and as everyone, from my parents to the young people at my youth group, search and post online, how educated are we on what this means? For many of us watching Virtual Revolution, we are well aware and as such make informed decisons, but I do think there needs to be some work done to ensure that everyone makes as informed a decision.

As I commented during the programme, "What happens in Vegas, no longer stays in Vegas" but do we all fully realise and appreciate that?

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February 13, 2010 at 10:44 pm | General, Social Media | No comment

Business Networks in Coventry, Solihull, Birmingham and surrounding areas

With our web design and social media work you may expect us to live almost entirely in the virtual world, to do all our networking online through social media from Linked In to Twitter. While this is a strong part of our marketing strategy it's certainly not the only one, and is actually made more effective by developing great social networks in the 'real world'.

So you will find myself and other members of the team here getting up at unearthly hours to attend local networking breakfasts or, for those who enjoy the extra hour or two's sleep, going to business lunches and evening talks and nibbles.

As people know that I network widely, I often get asked about what events are available locally. With that in mind I thought it might be useful to put a list together of local networking events. If you know of one I haven't added then do comment and let us know. Big thank you to Becki from Learn2 for supplying details for many of the clubs on this list.

Ones we attend regularly

We are also actively involved with the Federation of Small Businesses who run a wide variety of events at various times accross the region as do the IOD.

Other local clubs

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February 11, 2010 at 12:47 pm | General, Social Media | 2 comments

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