Email Marketing

Monitor and follow up your campaign

You should monitor the effectiveness of your email marketing to make sure you're getting value from the time and effort you're spending on it. This will help you to improve future campaigns. Ask yourself if it is working?

At the very least, it's valuable to keep a record of the number of responses you've received and from what type of customer. You can then assess which groups are more likely to respond to this marketing approach.

You could also keep track of the recipients who open your emails. Most email software can send you notification when the recipient opens a message. Alternatively, some Internet service providers can provide this information or you can buy software that gathers it for you.

Do the people who have opened your email have anything in common? This could help you to increase the effectiveness of your messages.

Response rates for email marketing are often slightly higher than for other direct-marketing methods. A 5 per cent response rate is generally accepted as strong for email marketing, while 3 or 4 per cent is the average.

If your response rates are below average, it's a good idea to check that you're focusing on the right type of customers and talking about their needs.

The right response

It's worth considering how you're going to handle the response from an email marketing campaign. Have you got enough capacity to answer the phones and respond to emails if you get a 5 per cent response rate? Will you be able to offer your product or service to recipients within the promised time?

Email marketing may give you valuable contact with new customers, as well as reinforcing your contact with existing ones, so spend some time planning to ensure you won't let anyone down.