Email Marketing Strategy: Shortcuts to Success

Email Marketing Strategy: Shortcuts to Success

Choosing Content Topics

Here's where all that spying you did on your competitors comes in handy. You know what communications they're sending -- use this knowledge to figure out how you can provide information that's even more valuable to your readers. If your competitors send a list of important events on a weekly basis, maybe you'll send a refined list daily. Where their articles are lacking in details, yours will be brimming with them. If there's an issue that they've missed, you'll snap it up and make it the focus of your newsletter.

There is one caveat to this advice, though: make sure that all your content is relevant to your readers. When deciding on the topics that you'd like to cover, keep your feet planted firmly in the shoes of your customers and prospects, and think about the kinds of articles that they'd like to read.

Once you've done all this, make a list of the topics you'd like to cover. Under each, develop a list of challenges, questions, and issues that relate to that topic. When you're happy with the list, source the relevant content from paid and free resources.

Sourcing Paid Content

It often makes sense to purchase content. However, becoming dependant on paid content can absorb a chunk of your budget and profits. Here are some tips on how to make the most of your paid content, along with some budget guidelines.

case studies
If you have a great customer success story, employing a professional writer to create a case study about it is definitely worthwhile. Creating the case study this way will allow you to mention or expand on the features, benefits, and advantages that you consider important. Unlike case studies written for magazines and other publications, this case study will be all yours: you'll own the copyright, so you can use it whenever you like without incurring any additional costs. If chosen carefully and written well, case studies can be timeless -- unless you change your product or service dramatically, it's unlikely that your case study will "expire." Even if it was no longer applicable, the case study could still serve as an historical success story -- another reason that makes it more than worth your while to get the piece professionally written.

articles
Most copywriters charge by the word for this type of writing, and fees can range between $0.50 and $1.00 per word; you pay for the number of words you end up using. When you commission this type of writing, you typically give the writer a guideline, such as "a 750-word article" or "a 2,000-word case study." It's difficult to go into much detail in less than 750 words (I have trouble writing less than 1,000 words when I'm writing articles), so allow $500 to $1000 -- possibly more -- per article. I don't recommend the use of paid articles unless you have a specific focus in mind that's particularly relevant to your product line, and a budget that allows you to commission articles of consistent quality.

reprints
Some publications and web sites will allow you to reprint their articles in your email newsletter for a fee that's usually based on the number of people who receive your newsletter, and your business goal. Educational or non-profit uses of the article will usually incur a more reasonable rate than reproductions made for commercial gain. Rates vary widely, depending on the publication or web site from which you source the content. For details, check the publication's permissions or reprint policy.

article harvesting
Certain companies will, for a fee, sift through the content of publications, web sites, and databases to pull out articles that suit your topics and readership. If you use the blurbs of these articles in your newsletters and allow your readers to click through to the original source for the full version, you can use these articles for free (you're still paying the finder's fee, though). It's a hit-and-miss approach that I've seen generate good and bad results. You'll likely have more luck if your topics are very specific, but the amount of experience the researchers have with your topic plays a big part, too. I've seen such organizations charge anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 per issue to find content for an email newsletter, though this cost usually includes the copy, design, programming, and mailing of your email. We'll look at these points further in the section called "Setting your Budget" later in this chapter.

Sourcing Free Content

There is high-quality, free content out there -- it just takes a little more time to find and manage than does paid content. Here's some of the best sources of free content:

your employees
Having your employees write articles about hot industry topics, an interesting aspect of your organization, or even their personal hobbies or interests can make for great reading that personalizes both your newsletter and your organization. Just make sure that the article isn't a sales pitch!

industry experts
A lot of industry experts, such as consultants and small business owners, will be happy to write articles for you -- after all, inclusion of their articles in your newsletters will only help to boost their profiles. These types of relationships can be very synergistic as long as the experts you use aren't in direct competition with your business, and their articles are relevant and offer tips that your readers can implement themselves. Obviously, you don't want any 750-word pitches on why your clients need to hire these writers or their companies!

customers
The biggest obstacle in getting customers to write for you is working out what they'll actually write. Usually, the more defined the topic, the better the results will be. Here are some suggestions:

• Ask a customer who's planning to attend an upcoming industry conference to write an article on one of the sessions.
• Ask customers to write about how they addressed the biggest challenges they faced in the last year.
• Have your customers write success stories about their innovations, such as marketing campaigns that went particularly well, new management styles that increase the efficiency of their organizations, or cost-cutting strategies that have helped boost their bottom lines.

interviews
Interviews are always interesting to read, and if you interview an industry expert, you'll be killing two birds with one stone. Most experts will be happy to chat with you free of charge, especially if they can approve the article before its publication. You might even conduct the interview over email, giving the interviewee time to think about the questions and craft the answers. This approach also saves you from taking notes or transcribing recordings of your conversations.

royalty-free article farms
A growing number of web sites are devoted to providing articles that can be reprinted for free, as long as you reference the author and include that person's basic biography and contact information. While I've never had much luck with these kinds of services (too often I find that the articles are thinly veiled advertisements for the writers), with a bit of time and research you may find relevant articles that are well-suited to your purpose.

repurposing your own content
For publishing companies, this is an obvious way to generate content. For example, SitePoint often uses chapters from its newly released books as feature articles on the sitepoint.com site. The same approach can be used with email, especially if your mailout will reach prospects, rather than customers. Include as much information as you need to make your article interesting, but don't include so much that there's no need for recipients to subscribe. Of course, you can use this model even if your organization isn't a publishing company -- if you've created content for customers (white papers, newsletters, and so on), consider reusing it in communications with your prospects.

aggregating the content of others
Sometimes the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. By combining articles, market research, surveys, and other content on a single topic from a variety of sources, you can increase the overall value of your mailout. You'll also save your readers time by providing everything they need in a single package. Just be sure to respect any copyright laws or requirements of the authors. In most cases, you won't be able to reprint the full text of articles written by others, but you may be able to include the first few sentences or write a brief blurb, and provide a link to the full text of the original article.

polls and surveys
People are always interested in what others think, and in terms of content, polls and surveys are extremely versatile. A simple poll -- one that poses an industry question with a few multiple choice answers, and shows readers how their responses compare with those of others -- could make a great regular content item. The results of a survey that includes both open-ended and multiple-choice questions could easily warrant analysis in a stand-alone article.

short tips and quotes
Tips and quotes can be the sole content items included in short-form editorial emails, or they may be slotted in as a piece of a complete email newsletter (similar to the regular poll item suggested above). If you make your tips actionable, include a source, and possibly offer a link to a third-party site for more information, your readers will love them! These tips can be prepared in advance and dropped into your email as necessary. Of course, you can prepare quotes in the same way, but make sure that the quotes you use are relevant to your topic of interest and to your readers.

barter
There's nothing wrong with doing things the old-fashioned way and, as the saying goes, "one good turn deserves another." Maybe you can offer that web hosting client of yours -- the one who happens to be a freelance writer -- free hosting in return for a certain number of articles each month.

Pulling it all Together

When you've decided on your likely content sources, grab the topic list that you created earlier, and add the specifics of these sources to it. Make the list as comprehensive as possible -- have a look at Example 3.5, "Content strategy for Congressional Publications's mailouts". Having your list to refer to throughout the coming months as you create your newsletter will make it much easier to get your strategy off the ground.

Example 3.5. Content strategy for Congressional Publications's mailouts

promotional email topics

• weekly magazine: features, benefits, and cost
• daily magazine: features, benefits, and cost
• online service/paid web site: features, benefits, and cost

relationship-building emails -- topics and sources

• upcoming congressional events and votes: repurpose from daily magazine
• opinion columns: repurpose from weekly magazine
• brief interviews with congressmen/lobbyists: completed via email by reporters
• pro/con article pairs on key legislation: guest columns written by lobbyists

How Often should I Send Mailouts?

One of the top five most frequently asked questions in email marketing today is: "How frequently should I send mailouts?" Often when you ask this, what you're really wondering is, "How often can I throw email promotions at my customers before they get angry and stop reading?" I wish there were a standard answer for this, such as "Oh, that's easy: three times a month," but, unfortunately, no such answer exists.

Mailout frequency varies widely between organizations, as demonstrated by the results of a 2005 survey that asked how often companies sent emails to their lists ("Email Marketing Metrics Guide," MarketingSherpa, October 2005.):

• 39% reported sending one email or less per quarter
• 32% said they sent mail monthly
• 18% contacted their readers two or three times a month
• 8% followed a weekly mailing schedule
• 4% of those surveyed sent more than one email a week

Frequency has the potential to make or break your email efforts. In a recent survey, 58% of consumer respondents said that they considered email that came too frequently to be spam, even if the sender was a business with which they had a working relationship ("DoubleClick's Sixth Annual Consumer Email Study," DoubleClick, December 2005). So, where's the sweet spot? What sort of mailout frequency is effective without being too much? You'll need to consider a range of factors to get the timing of your mailouts just right.

Type of Content

Recipients tend to be more tolerant of good editorial content than they are of emails that contain only promotional material. As such, email newsletters that combine editorial and promotional content can usually be sent more frequently than can straight promotional emails.

Length of Content

Longer emails take more time to read, and require more commitment from the recipient, than shorter emails. So, unless you have a very loyal following, you might want to temper the frequency of long emails. You'd probably get away with sending shorter emails, such as a "Tip of the Day" or similar, more frequently.

Resources

Resources are a critical factor in determining the frequency of your mailouts. It's better to send an email with great content less frequently than it is to send a mediocre email twice a week. Make a realistic determination of how much exceptional content your organization can produce, and use this as the primary determinant of the mailout's frequency. If you can only provide one mind-blowing article a month, send monthly. If you feel you have the resources to produce ten to 14 masterpieces a month, send your newsletter every other day. When in doubt, scale back -- you can always increase your frequency later.

Seasonality

You may need to vary the frequency of your mailout in accordance with seasons. We saw an example of this in the Dakin Farm case study in Chapter 1, Why Use Email Marketing? While Dakin Farm sent an average of three emails a month, the organization sent five emails during December, as its products made great Christmas gifts, and less frequently in the spring, when demand for the farm's products was low.

If there's a seasonal element to your product offerings, consider it as you set your email schedule.

Length of Sales Cycle

The length of your product's sales cycle is another factor that should impact on the frequency with which you send. Is your product purchased on impulse, or will your customers need to conduct research before they decide to buy? Is it a low-cost product, or will your customers need to get a budget approved before they can commit to the purchase?

If your product has a long sales cycle, you might consider developing an email campaign that helps readers move through the cycle step by step, and sending those emails reasonably frequently. For instance, you might create an informative newsletter that educates readers, moving them toward a purchase, and mail it once a week. This email would likely perform -- and be tolerated -- better than a weekly "buy our product today" email that supported a low-cost service.

Competition

Let's not forget about the competition. If your competitors are sending email once a week, will you be able to match their efforts effectively with an email dispatch every three days? Probably not. While this shouldn't be the only factor in your decision, it is an important point to consider. Sending more frequently than your competitors won't necessarily give your email newsletter greater appeal -- the factors that will achieve this are the distinguishing elements of your newsletter and the outstanding content that it provides. You may even be able to match or surpass a competitor's mediocre weekly email with an absolutely fabulous email that's sent every other week, or even monthly.

Here's an example: in the competitive analysis we conducted for the Digest of Congress, we identified an email frequency of twice a week: one mailing was editorial, the other promotional. These emails were sent on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively. If we wanted to match Digest of Congress's frequency, we'd shift our schedule so that our emails were sent one day ahead, scooping the news and opinion features in its email newsletter. We'd also add a short-form editorial segment to our Friday newsletter to help our readers schedule the coming week, and plan to send additional short-form editorials as needed -- for example, we might report on close votes as quickly as possible.

I used parameters such as these to put together the sample mailout plan shown in Table 3.4.

Table 3.4. Sample frequency and timing for Congressional Publications' mailout plan
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This is just the beginning! I could blow the competition away by publishing a value-packed short-form editorial piece every day, or take advantage of my daily publication schedule to send a brief overview of upcoming key events (not too many, though). All of this would allow me to create an email newsletter program that's appealing to my audience and better than those of my competitors.

Audience

Who are you sending the email to, and how much time do readers have to devote to your emails? A recipient who spends all day in front of the computer is more likely to read your emails than a recipient who doesn't. You don't want your emails to pile up; sending a daily email to a readership that only checks their emails once or twice a week isn't a good strategy.

List Fatigue

If your open and clickthrough rates decrease over time, you may be mailing too frequently. To head this possibility off at the pass, perform an analysis to see what you can learn about the ways in which readers use your email. If the average reader only opens and reads your daily email once a week, you should think about mailing weekly. On the other hand, if you find that your open rates on monthly mailouts are high compared to the industry average, it could be because your audience want to hear more from you.

Timeliness

Our world has a 24-hour news cycle. Most of the stories that appear in the morning news summary email I receive were posted on the publisher's web site the evening before. By the time that summary arrives, the news is stale. This situation should be avoided at all costs, and two tactics, in particular, can help you handle it. The first option is to email more frequently the information that's likely to date quickly The second solution is to develop your content strategy to avoid the most time-sensitive material. This approach will give you a more relaxed publishing schedule, but be careful to ensure that taking this path doesn't lower the value of the content that you do include so that your email becomes irrelevant to your readers.

Relevance

In general, the more relevant readers find your information, the more often they'll want to receive it. However, be wary of the fact that relevance is in the eye of the beholder -- just because you feel the information is relevant and warrants a daily or twice-daily send doesn't mean that your readers will feel the same way.

Letting Readers Choose

Back in the early days of email marketing, it was seen as good practice to allow your readers to select the frequency with which they wanted to receive your mailouts, but this is no longer the case. While that approach did give readers more control, it added complexity to the mail schedule and created more work for the organizations who sent the emails. Personally, rather than giving my readers a choice, I prefer to inform prospects of the frequency with which I mail, and let them use this information to make their opt-in decision.

How often should you send email, then? You should send as often as you need to, and no more than you have to. Don't expect to find the ideal mailing frequency without trial and error. It will constantly ebb and flow in accordance with internal and external factors, but in time, you should be able to find a happy medium for your mailing schedule, and even anticipate changes in readers' needs.

The Best Day to Send

You've probably heard about studies that have shown -- conclusively! -- the best day and time to send your email. It used to be that Mondays and Fridays were forbidden: supposedly, no one read email on those days. Then, a new study showed that Monday was actually the best day to send, and Friday wasn't so bad either. In this study, Wednesdays and Thursdays were the worst days of the week to send ("eROI mail statistics for Q2 '04," eROI, July 2004.).

So, am I recommending that you send your mailouts on Mondays, at least until the next study comes out? No. As with all third-party data, the results presented here may or may not apply to you and your audience. There's no perfect day to send.

If you're just starting out, I suggest you pick a day -- any day. If you have relevant information about your audience, use it to help you decide which day might be best. For instance, many chefs have Monday off, so if you're trying to reach them at work (provided that they have a computer in the kitchen or some sort of access to email), you probably shouldn't send your message on a Monday. If you're trying to reach office workers during business hours, you'd probably choose not to mail on Saturdays and Sundays.

Once you've narrowed the week to specific days that might suit, test to find the best day for your mailout. Testing is a relatively simple procedure: send to half your list on your regular mailing day (say, Monday), then send to the other half of the list on a different day (say, Tuesday). Now, look at your metrics. Be sure to review all your metrics -- opens, clickthroughs, orders generated, dollars generated, etc. -- as you identify the winning day. You can keep performing tests, pitting the winning days against other days, until you have a definitive winner.

Once you have identified the best day to send, it's a good idea to re-test it once in a while. One thing that those "best day to send" studies do show is that things change. This year, Tuesdays might be great for you, but when you run a test next year, you may find that Thursdays are really where it's at. Be prepared to test, and be prepared to move with your audience's needs and preferences.

Although it's important to spend some time thinking about this issue, don't get too wrapped up in finding the best day to send. After all, one of the great things about the Internet is that it's global. If you're sending email to people around the world, when it's Monday for you, it could be Tuesday for at least some of your readers. Will that make or break your campaign's success? I don't think so! It's good to put some effort into identifying the days on which your readers may be more disposed to reading your mail, but don't obsess over it.

The Best Time to Send

As with the thorny proposition of finding a best day to send, there's no single answer to the question, "What's the best time to send?" Again, it's good to test. That said, you need to come up with a time for your very first send, and the best way to do that is to think the process through.

If I'm looking to reach business people, I try to land my email in their inbox during business hours. If I'm sending to multiple time zones, I work to find a window in which business is underway in all zones. For example, if you're mailing to people across the US, you'd want to send between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. EST, which is 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on the west coast. This is a window in which business people on both US coasts (and everyone in between) tend to be in their offices.

I avoid sending email outside business hours. I know what my email inbox looks like first thing in the morning -- it's full of junk mail. I end up hitting Delete a lot, and sometimes I actually make the mistake of deleting emails that I want to read. I know I'm not the only one who makes this mistake, and as I don't want to see the email I send mixed in with spam, nor see recipients delete it accidentally, I mail when I expect that recipients are likely to be at their computers.

Perhaps you want to send before business hours, so that your email's waiting for readers when they check their inboxes first thing in the morning. This time is fine, but be sure to keep an eye on your metrics. If they're just as good when you send at 2:00 a.m. as they are when you send at 2:00 p.m., it's fine; if they aren't, you might consider changing your schedule.

Let's do Lunch
I often try to think about when my recipients will have time to read my email newsletter. Ideally, I want them to have a spare moment to look at it as soon as it arrives. With some email newsletters (especially the ones that contain industry news), I've found that mailing just before lunch time works very well. My theory is that many people eat at their desks and want to read something as they do so; an industry newsletter is enough like work to be acceptable to your superiors if they catch you reading it, but not so much like work that you feel like you're sacrificing your lunch break to read it.

Defining your Quantitative Goals

By now, you should have some qualitative guidelines for your email marketing strategy: which products or services you're going to market, who you're going to market them to, what actions you're hoping to convince recipients to take, what types of email you're going to use to present your message, and so on. The next step is to put some quantitative goals behind these guidelines.

Quantitative goals need to be relevant, measurable, and realistically achievable. They should measure factors that directly affect the success or failure of your business. You'll likely have a number of different goals, so be prepared to prioritize them. When I think of quantitative goals, I separate them into two types: bottom-line goals and means-to-an-end goals.

Bottom-line Goals

Bottom-line goals should correlate directly with your overall measures of success. They're often expressed in terms of units sold or dollars generated. Total revenue generated, revenue generated per dollar spent, and profitability are all examples of bottom-line goals. These goals are your top priorities -- the ones that you need to hit to get your bonus or keep the company afloat.

Some examples of common bottom-line goals include:

• achieving renewals from a certain percentage of your current customers
• upselling a set number of current customers
• cross-selling a certain quantity or dollar amount of your product or service
• having a certain percentage of your customers refer your business to their colleagues
• acquiring a certain number of new customers or new sales
• generating a set number of qualified leads
• creating awareness of your brand in a set percentage of your target audience
• achieving a given number of articles, quotes or other media mentions
• generating a certain amount of advertising revenue

Do these goals sound familiar? That's right: we're just taking the qualitative goals we defined earlier and putting some numbers, or quantitative goals, against them.

Means-to-an-end Goals

Means-to-an-end goals are objectives that you believe you need to hit to meet your bottom-line goals. Here are some examples of common means-to-an-end goals:

• achieving an average delivery rate of n%
• achieving an average unique open rate of n%
• achieving an average clickthrough rate of n%
• converting n% of clicks to sales
• growing your list by n%, or to a certain level

In general, if you miss all your bottom-line goals but meet all your means-to-an-end goals, you probably didn't have a successful year in the eyes of the company (although you may have positioned yourself to do very well the following year). But if you miss all your means-to-an-end goals and achieve all your bottom-line goals, you're probably doing fine (although you'll want to try to meet the means-to-an-ends goals the following year, when you'll need them in order to meet your much higher bottom-line goals, adjusted upwards because of your success).

Measuring your Performance
I've seen many email marketers face tough decisions when their performance plans are tied too closely to means-to-an-end goals.

For instance, one marketing director's bonus was based on list growth and the quantity of emails sent. As a result, even though a large segment of the list was non-responsive (that is, they hadn't responded in any way in a year or more), he was hesitant to stop mailing them. While it would have saved the company money and improved his metrics, it would have jeopardized his bonus. Instead, he spent a lot of the company's time and money trying, in vain, to get these customers to respond -- money that, in the long run, would have been better spent in attracting new opt-ins to the list.

Benchmarks

The hardest thing about quantitative goals is coming up with the numbers. To some extent, if you've never done any email marketing before, you really are just guessing.

Benchmarks can help reduce that guesswork. A benchmark is a guideline that you can use to come up with an intelligent guess for your own quantitative goals. I collect benchmarks. I pull them from email marketing campaigns I've executed myself, but I also get them from articles, case studies, and other third-party sources. Benchmark collecting is a useful hobby -- let me explain how it's done.

If you've done email marketing in the past, your results from those exercises should be your first stop for benchmark data on bottom-line and means-to-an-end goals. I usually create a spreadsheet in which each past email marketing campaign has its own row, and each quantitative goal or metric has its own column. Then I go through the spreadsheet and fill in the data I've collected for each campaign. If you don't have any past experience with email marketing, don't worry -- we're not done yet!

Benchmarks can also be garnered from the quantitative results of other marketing activities you've undertaken. Even if it's an estimate (e.g. "it seems like I close about one out of every three leads that come in"), write it down. I list other marketing initiatives -- one per row -- under the email marketing efforts I detailed in my spreadsheet, filling in any of the metric columns that I can.

Next, look for third-party goals or metrics. One of the most readily available sources of third-party benchmarks is the case studies that are published by so many industry magazines, newsletters, and web sites. Don't wait until you need metrics to begin looking for case studies, though -- collect them in your daily rounds of the Web. I look for case studies on a regular basis, all year long. When I find one that's relevant and contains good metrics, I file it either on my computer or print it out. One of my favorite sources is MarketingSherpa -- its case studies are usually heavy with quantitative metrics.

Another resource is special reports. A number of publishers -- MarketingSherpa among them -- publish annual metrics guides that aggregate figures from case studies, surveys, and other sources. They often cost a couple of hundred dollars, but you'll be glad you spent that money when you write a marketing plan or email strategy.

Many email service providers (ESPs) also publish benchmarks (mostly means-to-an-end benchmarks, but sometimes bottom-line figures) that can be useful. Some offer the data only to paying clients. Others offer a full report to clients and a summary to everyone else -- DoubleClick is the most notable example. DoubleClick's reports are quarterly; the free summary is about four pages but it's broken into analyses of six or eight industry segments, which are very useful.

Articles will often give you facts and figures that you can use to develop benchmarks for your product. Many industry publications have "success stories" with metrics that you can add to your spreadsheet.

Finally, your colleagues can be source of benchmark data. Maybe you have a sister company whose marketing director would be willing to swap metrics with you. Or maybe you've a personal friend in a non-competitive organization in your industry, and that person's willing to do a swap (be careful in this case: some companies have policies against sharing any data with outside sources). If you don't personally know anyone who's able to help you, you might post your benchmark query to a forum, discussion board, or distribution list. Many marketers are comfortable sharing figures in these types of venues. Be warned, though: there's nothing better than finding out that your email marketing programs outperform those of others, and nothing worse than finding out they're not as successful!

If you're able to gather a significant number of benchmarks, you'll likely start to see trends and patterns in the data. Maybe most of the open rate figures fall in the 35% to 50% range; perhaps renewals rarely top 80%, but don't usually fall lower than 60%. If you can get to this point, great! Look at these trends and set your own goals accordingly. If you don't get to this point, that's okay too. You still have some figures to use as a starting point.

A final note on benchmarks: they're fairly controversial. There's a school of thought that contends that figures produced from a totally different source cannot be relevant to your situation -- your product, audience, and qualitative goals are unique, so why would any other numbers fit your plan?

I agree with this argument to some extent. If your email marketing is profitable for you, that's the main thing. But we all need something to shoot for -- a place to start. Benchmarks provide that launchpad.

Benchmarks to Get you Started
Table 3.5, "Benchmarks from DoubleClick's Q4 2004 Email Trend Report" presents some aggregate figures from DoubleClick's "Q4 2004 Email Trend Report" to get your benchmarking and goal-setting under way ("DoubleClick Q4 2004 Email Trend Report," DoubleClick, Inc., March 2005.).

Table 3.5. Benchmarks from DoubleClick's Q4 2004 Email Trend Report
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Setting Quantitative Goals

The benchmarking process should provide you with some guidelines to use as you set quantitative goals. Now it's time to look at the benchmarks you've found, add your own personal knowledge -- and a heavy dose of gut instinct -- and choose some specific quantitative goals for your program.

You can approach this in one of two ways: set some bottom-line goals for your email marketing strategy and work backward, or fill in some means-to-an-end goals and work forward. I prefer the second option, because I can usually set some means-to-an-end goals with which I feel comfortable as a result of the benchmarking process. Also, if the bottom-line goals aren't what I expected, I can always go back and adjust the means-to-an-end goals accordingly to make the numbers work.

In Table 3.6 and Table 3.7, I've pulled in the benchmarks presented in Table 3.5, and set some goals based on a scenario in which Congressional Publications sends monthly emails to 10,000 addresses.

Table 3.6. Means-to-an-end goals for Congressional Publications
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Table 3.7. Bottom-line goals for Congressional Publications
(click to view image)

As you can see, we have two benchmarks that relate to the number of orders generated, and three that relate to revenue generated. Here's where your knowledge and gut instinct come into play. You need to sanity-check each of these numbers and choose the one that you think you're most likely to achieve. I usually lean toward a mid-range figure. Remember, this is just a starting point. You can adjust these figures up or down after you have a few sends and some actual results under your belt.

This part of the strategic process can feel a little like a jigsaw puzzle. You collect the pieces (benchmarks and data) from various sources, then try to fit them together in a logical way. It may take a few tries to come up with something that you're comfortable with. Don't get frustrated -- just keep working with the pieces until they feel right.

Setting your Budget

Once you have what feels like a workable set of bottom-line and means-to-an-end goals, it's time to look at the budget that you'll need to achieve them. As with goal-setting, this process may take some time and effort, and you may end up adjusting your bottom-line goals in order to stay within your budget. Don't worry -- this is normal. Just keep working on this process until you have a plan that you can implement.

Defining your Costs

Email marketing can be cost-effective, but it's not free. Here are some of the common expenses that are associated with it, along with some very rough estimates of costs.

Creative: Copywriting

Creative costs include copywriting and design. If you already have people on staff to handle these tasks, there may not be any incremental cost associated with the emails' production. But if you don't, you'll have to factor them in.

A number of different pricing models are used by copywriters. As I mentioned earlier, some want to be paid by the word, some charge an hourly rate, and some will give you a flat rate per email. There's no right or wrong way to pay for copy, and if you're working with copywriters outside of your company, you usually won't have a choice, as the writers will decide how they charge. Work to get the best copy that you can afford within your budget.

Here are some going rates for copywriters; you can use these as rough guidelines:

• $0.50 to $1.00 per word
• $75 to $125 per hour
• $350 to $700 per one-page email

I've heard of people who want to pay copywriters on a commission basis, the idea being that writers will receive nothing up front, but instead receive a percentage of the sales their copy generates. I don't know of any copywriters who are willing to do this. It's not that they don't have faith in their own work, but that so much of what makes or breaks an email campaign is beyond their control. Something as small as sending the email at a bad time can decrease the response rate, and a list that's not as targeted as you thought can totally bomb, even with the best copy in the world.

There are also copywriters who will demand a high up-front fee as well as either a small bounty for each email you send, a commission on the revenues their copy generates, or both. Unless you're a well-established company, it's probably best to steer clear of this model. If you think that the copywriter's expertise will generate sales that greatly exceed the price that they're asking for, it may work. But for most companies -- particularly those new to email marketing -- it's a losing proposition.

I prefer to pay copywriters a flat rate, based on the $350 to $700 quote above. Additional pages, if I have them, should be billed at a lower rate. This gives me a fixed number to put into my budget spreadsheet, and provides insurance against cost overruns in this area.

Can you write the copy for your emails yourself? Of course. And this isn't a bad way to get started. It's very cost-effective -- you don't have to set aside any budget for copy. You may get to a point, though, where you want to take your email marketing to the next level, and purchasing professional copy skills may be the most cost-effective way to lift your emails' response rates.

Creative: Design

If you're sending text-only emails, you may be able to forgo design costs. However, I don't recommend this approach. Design doesn't have to be elaborate; something as small as a company logo, some bolded terms, color, and formatting (none of which you have with plain text) can add to readability and boost response rates. If you have a staff member who can design your email in-house, that's another bonus for your budgeting, and you can jump ahead to writing the HTML.

Good design doesn't have to be expensive. The costs are similar to those for good copy, and many times, the person who designs your email will also code the HTML for it at the same cost. I think it's worth having the email professionally designed even if you decide not to spring for professional copy.

Here are some cost guidelines for design:

• $75 to $150 per hour
• $100 to $500 per one-page email

You'll pay a little more if you want to review a few designs and choose one of them, but generally a single, simple design will serve your purposes. More elaborate designs will incur a higher cost, which is why the range of the per-email price given above is so large.

Some email service providers will create an HTML template for you, or provide you with a tool to create your own templates. Once you've created the template, you can reuse it for different emails simply by replacing the copy and images. The service provider may charge a one-time fee for this, or it may be included in your setup costs. This can be an extremely cost-effective approach, especially if you're just starting out. Not only does it eliminate the design cost for each send, but it also covers your programming cost, since the templates are already in HTML.

Writing the HTML

If you're sending HTML, you'll need someone who can convert your design into HTML. As with the copy and design tasks, if you have someone who can code the email in-house, you're off the hook cost-wise.

A word of caution: the programs in which your recipients will read their emails are much more sensitive than web browsers. So something that looks great in Internet Explorer or Firefox may lose its integrity in Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail. This is one reason to use an email service provider who provides you with an HTML template, as most are familiar with the differences and know how to program email so that it displays well in most, if not all, email clients. If you're using a programmer to write your HTML, employ one who's familiar with coding HTML for email.

Programming tends to be a bit less expensive than copywriting or design. Here are some ballpark estimates of programming costs:

• $40 to $75 per hour
• $100 to $250 per one-page email

The Send

You can handle the send yourself using your own computer or server, or you can hire an email service provider (ESP) to help you. If you handle the send yourself, your costs will typically include a one-time fee for the software, and possibly ongoing fees for maintenance and software upgrades. It can be a cost-effective way to go, but don't ignore the fact that you may also need to pay someone to install the software and manage the sends.

Pricing for email marketing software can range from $100 to $500, and more. As far as support goes, some companies don't offer any support at all, while others will charge you anything from $300 to $1000 or more per year, depending on their levels of coverage. Upgrades work similarly -- some are free, but others will cost you as much as the original software license.

ESPs offer a range of options, from self-service (you get access to their tools and handle the send yourself) to full-service (you tell them what you want and they do the rest) offerings, from designing the creative through to sending, tracking, and reporting on the mailout.

Most ESPs charge clients on the basis on the number of emails sent each month. This charge is usually defined as a cost-per-thousand or CPM figure. There's a wide range of CPMs out there, from a low $3, up to $30 or more. The more emails you send, the more bargaining power you have, and the lower the CPM you can negotiate. Other ESPs use flat rates rather than CPMs, though they still base these rates on a range of send quantities (e.g. if you send 1,000 to 4,999 emails a month, you're charged $29.95).

In addition to send costs, ESPs may also charge setup fees (between $1,000 and $15,000), and with full-service providers you'll be required to pay a fee in addition to the CPM for each send to cover these setup costs.

If you have chosen a provider for email marketing services, it should be easy to fill their costs into your budget. If not, you might assume you'll pay costs similar to those shown in Table 3.8 for a cost-effective self-service ESP.

Table 3.8. Average costs of a self-service ESP
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Tracking and Reporting

Standard tracking and reporting of metrics such as deliverables, opens, and clickthroughs, should be included with your purchase of email marketing software or your agreement with your ESP. If this service isn't included, find another vendor.

For more advanced tracking, such as services that track the clickstream your user follows from your email through to your web site's order process, you'll need web analytics software. These packages are a dime a doze -- numerous free versions are available on the Internet, and other, more detailed solutions are available for purchase. Paid versions often offer much friendlier user interfaces, and comprehensive statistics; however, you can get the same information from less expensive packages that let you download the tracking data to Excel -- it just takes more time to decipher your results.

Ask your ESP if it has a web analytics partner that it could recommend -- some ESPs and web analytics software vendors have formed relationships that make it easy to view the full clickstream. The teaming of SubscriberMail with ClickTracks is one such partnership; others are out there.

The purchase of web analytics software generally requires a one-time fee, as well as possible maintenance and upgrade charges down the road. Prices vary, and although some packages are free, they can run to $500 or more, with maintenance costing between $250 to $1,000 a year. Upgrades may cost as much as you paid for the original software license.

Finally, some companies, known as ASPs (application services providers), will give you access to a tool that lets you view your web analytics. While these services cost more than software solutions, they're easier to install and use. The pricing of these solutions start at $100 a month, the cost depending on the level of features available, the service required, and the volumes of traffic your web site attracts.

Creating a Budget

With the assumptions you've made, and the benchmarks you set in the section on goals, you should now have enough data to put together a budget estimate. In Table 3.9 I've included a sample based on the costs we've discussed throughout this section.

Table 3.9. Budget estimate for the Congressional Publications campaign
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In Chapter 1, Why Use Email Marketing?, we learned that Dakin Farm was able to send emails at a cost per send of $400 to their list of 15,000 subscribers. How did they keep their costs so low? By using an email service provider that provided templates for HTML emails, Dakin Farm was able to eliminate copywriting, design, and programming costs. This is a simple way to decrease your cost per send, and increase your profit per send!

Speaking of profit, the next step in our budgeting process -- shown in Table 3.10 -- is to compare your budget and revenue figures to check that, as you execute your campaign, you won't end up in the red.

Table 3.10. Return-on-investment for the Congressional Publications campaign
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With our current figures, our email marketing strategy would return almost $3 for each dollar we spend. That's not a bad return for a start -- many organizations are happy just to break even when they start a new marketing program. If you were expecting a slightly larger return, that's okay, too. You can always go back and tweak the figures until you're happy.

Summary

This chapter focused on developing an effective email marketing strategy.

First, we looked at the key questions that we need to address during this process, considered which types of emails would have the best chance to achieve our goals, and explored possible solutions for sourcing email content. Then, we discussed the circumstances in which it would be suitable to use paid content, and investigated free content sources, too. We then explored, in detail, the processes by which we can determine the ideal frequency for our emails, and define our goals and benchmarks. Finally, I provided you with budget and revenue guidelines to help you anticipate the outlays and returns you might generate from your first campaign.

Remember that a strategic plan is an evolving document. You should constantly be changing it to incorporate what you've learned, and give yourself the best chance of success in the future.

This chapter provided you with the tools you'll need to create an effective email marketing strategy, identify any problems it might have, and fix them ahead of time. The next step? Implementation. Subsequent chapters of The Email Marketing Kit deal with subscriber acquisition and retention, designing email, optimizing deliverability, tracking and reporting on your campaigns, viral marketing, using third-party lists, and more. For full details, see the book's Table of Contents -- and make sure you download this chapter in PDF format, for future reference.