The opportunities that present themselves with third party email marketing are perhaps as great as the challenges. An email marketing campaign gone awry will do nothing more than harm your brand image and disengage customers. However, by utilizing the proper tools and resources at your disposal, you have the potential to execute a strategic campaign that will both increase your brand awareness and enhance your conversion ratio.
What is 3rd Party Email Marketing?
Legitimate 3rd party email marketing involves marketing to opt-in lists of those who have subscribed to receive offers based on their particular interests. These lists are not homegrown. That is, they do not consist of your existing customer database, but of potential prospects who have not yet been introduced to what you have to offer. Businesses of all sizes choose to market to third party optin email data in order to expand their reach, increase sales and grow their own lists of loyal subscribers.
What steps should I take to capitalize on third party email marketing?
1. Find a reputable ESP – Unfortunately, it has become common practice for companies to fall into the trap of buying the worthless $99 email list from data brokers promising that their data is completely clean, free of spam seeds and 99% deliverable. If it sounds like an offer that’s too good to be true, it probably is. A legitimate company recognizes the value of a properly groomed, opt-in list, and will never sell their lists on the open market. Rather, these lists are owned primarily by the ESP or email publisher and are rented out on a CPM basis (cost per thousand) to recipients that match your targeting criteria. A reputable email publisher has a mailing system that is configured properly to enhance deliverability on a large scale while remaining Can-Spam compliant.
2. HTML Template – If you are designing your own email creative, optimal delivery to the inbox should remain your primary focus. The last thing you want to do is create an ad that is coded improperly and goes straight to the spam folder. What’s the point of launching an email campaign if your message never reaches your audience? You should have two things in mind when crafting your HTML/text email creative – incorporate limited text and images and include a single, enticing call to action. Keep it simple. The objective of your email is not to sell your product or service in the email message you send. Rather, you must merely pique their interest with a relevant, concise message to encourage them to click to learn more. For specific HTML coding specifications, refer to a recently published blog article, The Complexity of Simplicity in Email Marketing.
3. Landing Page – You’ve recruited the interested buyers to your website. Now, this is where you make the sale. Allow your prospective customers to do a bit of research, and make it easy for them to act. If your intention is to increase your newsletter sign-ups, outline the benefits and value that the recipient will receive by receiving your scheduled newsletters. If your goal lies in increasing sales, you must define the features and benefits of your product as well as your competitive advantage. If I have to click 10 times, call 4 different people, only to get redirected back to where I started, I’m not going to waste my time. Who would?
Those in the email marketing industry can attest to the fact that there is a right way and a wrong way to do email marketing. Current statistics suggest that third party email marketing is among the most cost-effective marketing tactics used to drive new traffic to your website. With the Guaranteed Opens Program, you only pay for emails that are delivered to the inbox and opened, without the images being blocked. With this specific program, quite a large volume of emails are sent to be able to get a designated number of people to open and view the advertisement.
If you are going to justify making an investment in third party email marketing, you must be committed to doing it right.
Contact us today if you would like additional information on any of our email marketing progams.