In comparison to ten years ago when I first started learning to do email marketing, there's now a huge choice of providers. In the early days, the only DIY solutions were Smallbizmailer and Microsoft Listbuilder, both clunky as hell and I think long gone. Now, it costs no more than a few pounds a month for access to a powerful hosting, sending & tracking facility, and there are hundreds to choose from.
So why would a business pay someone like me to manage their email marketing, when they can do it themselves for a fraction of the cost?
The answer is because there's plenty more to email marketing than learning how to use Constant Contact, or whatever system you've signed up to.
By way of illustration, here are the kinds of questions from clients that I answer on a regular basis:
- When is it OK to start emailing people with our newsletter/email offers? Will it be spamming?
- We're thinking of changing email marketing providers. Which would be the most suitable for us and why?
- We've heard that it's no longer good enough to send the same thing to the whole list. How would you recommend we improve the relevancy of what people receive?
- Our open rate has been steadily dropping. Why is that and should we be worried?
- We've acquired an extra 14,000 addresses to add to our list, but the name fields are incomplete. How do we integrate the new addresses without messing up the mail merge? And is OK to just start sending the newsletter to the new combined list?
- How can we purge our list of those who haven't opened or clicked on a link in six months?
- We've been told that some images in our newsletter (but not all) don't show up in certain email clients. And sometimes the layout is completely messed up. Our developer says the emails are coded correctly. What is causing the problem?
- Our newsletter has worked well for us for several years. Now we are using Twitter and Facebook – how can we use email to enhance our social media efforts, and vice versa?
These are problems to be solved by human ingenuity and the knowledge that comes from both email and general marketing experience, over many years and across a range of clients and sectors.
Email marketing is a valuable customer retention tool and it's fantastic that the cost of entry is within reach of even the smallest startup. But to do email marketing well, rather than just adequately, a business needs access to someone who understands all the issues – technical, legal, social, behavioural, marketing, design – whether in-house or an external consultant. Whichever way, it does not come cheap.
