Email Marketing Tips

Contrary to popular opinion predicting response rates is pretty much impossible! 

It’s as true in email marketing as it is in any form of direct marketing. Though marketing companies may tell you that you should ‘expect around 2%’ response (or whatever), when you think about it its patent nonsense. For example, if you’re planning to sell a Christmas Santa in December for £2.95 would you expect the same response rate as the guy selling million pound yachts? Of course not and there are so many other factors to consider. 

A key consideration when sending out a campaign should be to set realistic targets and expectations. But how do you do it if it’s impossible to predict response rates? 

The answer is simple - testing. Email marketing is incredibly cost effective to test and it is statistically predictable over time. It’s safe to assume that if you send 2000 mails and get 20 click through you will get a similar percentage of clicks from 20,000 (as long as the group has been selected using the same criteria). Equally, if you send to your group of 2000 and get 0 responses it’s unlikely you will do any better even if you send to 200,000! 

In the event that your responses are very low or non-existent then something about your message is not hitting the mark with your intended recipients. It’s time to re-think and test to a small group. Check out some of our previous blog entries for tips on how to write effective campaigns and improve your response rates.

Your customer/member database is your most powerful asset. You have collected data from each of your business contacts including their email addresses, so why not use it to make yourself some money?

Start by keeping your customers and members up to date with all your latest deals and offers through regular daily, weekly or monthly email campaigns. A customer who has brought from you previously or has visited you before will do so again. These contacts are a potential goldmine, so ignore them at your peril.

If you have suppliers or partners for your business why not ask if they would like to sponsor an email campaign to your customers or members. This is a great way for a supplier/partner to get a low cost focused advertising campaign and a way for you to cover your costs or even make a profit on each campaign you send. This method of campaign funding and revenue generation has certainly proved successful for some of our LiveWire Campaign account holders.

Please remember to ensure that you try to capture as much of your customer and member data as possible for use on later campaigns. You should always be looking to increase your database as this will strengthen your marketing power.

Example:
Business Example A Limited has 10,000 customers recorded in their customer database with their associated email addresses. They run a monthly email campaign to their customer base offering their latest product deal of Product A at the RRP of £5.99.

The monthly LiveWire Campaign costs are only £60 + VAT per month. Some LiveWire Campaign users are charging upwards of £100 for an advertising slot on campaigns of 7 - 10k, so they are in profit on every campaign they send before they even sell a thing! Plus, they can also expect at least an average return on investment from sales. A typical example from 2006 is shown below.

No. Sent – Total number of emails sent
CTR – Click through rate percentage
No. of CT – Total number of Click Through’s
CCR – Customer Conversion Rate (Percentage of Click Through’s converting to a sale)
Gross Revenue Per month – Revenue generated per month from each campaign.

* The above figures are based on average click through and customer conversion rates from 2006.

Members of LiveWire Campaign have been asking us for some time if an affiliate scheme is available. We’ve listened and introduced a scheme which is true to the LiveWire Campaign philosophy of straightforward simplicity. It enables members of LiveWire Campaign to earn revenue from any recommendations they make to the system. 

It works like this: 

All that is required is for you to sign-up your members and clients to LiveWire Campaign using a designated affiliate code that we provide to you. You will then receive a share of gross revenue received from each sign-up. It’s not a one off hit - you will receive your share of every voucher purchased from your affiliate members for as long as they remain on the system. How good a deal is that!! 

Revenue will be generated when a sign-up chooses to buy a Pay-as-you-go voucher. 

You will receive a percentage of gross revenue (less payment gateway processing costs) at the following rates: 

Up to 500 sign-ups = 10% Gross revenue
Over 500 sign-ups = 20% Gross revenue 

We don’t believe that we could make it any more simple than that and it means that our regular users can share in the future success of LiveWire Campaign. If you’re interested send us an email at affinity@livewirecampaign.co.uk