The Six-Step Process of E-Mail Marketing

The following six-step process, recommended by Internet marketing consultant Al Bredenberg, should be put together to execute success­ful direct e-mail campaigns.

1. Planning
Direct e-mail campaign, like any other promotional effort, should have an detailed plan and come from your business's over­all marketing plan. Here are some questions you should answer at the beginning.

1. What is the product for? (What does it do and who is it for?)
2. Who is your targeted audience?
3. What is your competitive position?
4. What revenue do you expect to collect? (Be specific: number of sales, dollar amount of sales, profit margin.)
5. What do you want to achieve with this e-mail campaign?

Besides answering questions like these, keep in mind that an e-mail campaign affects things such as fulfillment, delivery, customer service, etc.

2. Determining your offer

Basically, any offer should have a peculiarity, something that makes it unique, interesting or promising. As a rule the offer is a straight sale: you give your clients the product with its associated benefits, and they give you money. It is useful for a business to structure more compelling offers, or offers that sound like an exceptional value. Perhaps you could offer a discount price for those who order during a certain predefined timeframe during this special campaign. Or maybe offer a free pre­mium, something like: buy one and get one free. Whatever the offer, you should emphasize that in your ad copy.

3. List selection

If you don’t have your own mailing list (collected with the help of registration forms on your site) then you will have to buy one or use a mailing service. The list or lists you mail to will be deter­mined mostly by your budget and marketing plans. Some list providers offer many e-mail lists with varying demo­graphics or interest areas. Some providers own only one list, but they should be able to tell you what the characteristics or interests of their recipients are.

4. Creative

Any advertising piece consists of a concept, copy, design, and format. In other words there is creativity. It is difficult to state what stage is more critical than another. Offer or list selection are critical choices you're going to make. Creativity is as critical as the steps stated above. If you botch your creativity, your campaign will be ruined and your money wasted.

5. Testing

After you've selected your lists, created the mes­sage, and arrange all back-end processes. It's time to test. Now you have several lists that match your purposes. Each list may have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of addresses. Test a future e-mail campaign on smaller samples, a few thousand per list would be alright. Then examine the response to see which lists have the best "pull." Code your tests to determine where responses are coming from. Also test various offers and creative approaches to find out what generates the highest response rate.

6. Rollout

It’s time to roll out your cam­paign to a larger audience after identifying responsive lists and work­able offers and creative approaches. Be sure to track the campaign and measure response. Always run the numbers.
What you should remember from this lesson:

1. A successful direct email campaign goes through a six-step process: planning, determining offer, list selection, creative content, test and rollout. The Internet has permanently changed the way business is done in America and worldwide.
2. It is obvious to work carefully at every step as well as thru the whole process. Any botch within any stage can lead to campaign failure.