E-mail marketing has more uses than you might think.
Alison Kramer is the owner of Nummies, a five-year old firm that makes lingerie for nursing mothers. The business only sells wholesale, distributing goods through a network of retailers across North America, from its home base in Toronto. If her business doesn't sound like it has much use for e-mail marketing, consider this: Ms. Kramer uses a mailing list not to mail consumers, but to keep in touch with her retail partners.
"The idea is that we can use it to open a conversation," she says. "It's just very conversational and casual."
On one hand, the newsletters – one in English, another in French – give retailers practical information about what's coming up. But it's also a way of staying in touch with clients once that list has become too big to manage one-on-one.
With about 200 recipients, Ms. Kramer's list isn't the largest in the world – it has no need to be – but it points to some of the best practices that a new e-mail marketer should keep in mind:
Do make it about more than selling: If e-mail gets a bad rap for simply bombarding customers with pitches and deals, it might be because that's what spammers do, too. But clever e-mail marketing does more than push the latest sale.
Even before you send e-mails, you have to convince people that it's worth their while to add their names to your list. Offering a generic product – a simple newsletter or a vaguely-defined promise of updates – seldom cuts it.
"Who needs another newsletter?" says Scott Stratten, a marketing consultant and author. "Nobody!"
Instead, tailor the e-mail's contents to the audience at hand and offer genuinely valuable content. A real-estate firm might include market updates as well as fresh listings. An accountant's newsletter might offer new ways to save money, geared to market conditions.
Ms. Kramer's newsletters, for instance, drive clients to a feedback questionnaire, and make sure that less-vocal partners don't get forgotten.
"Things are very busy, and you can forget to reach out to the customer. It's that reminder once a month to wave our hands and look for feedback."
Don't ask too much: While you're at it, make sure not to discourage prospective readers by asking for too much information. An e-mail address is all that's required. Every additional field of information you request will drive away customers. Instead, get them on your list, and then let them come to you.
"I've seen small business asking for phone numbers," says Mr. Stratten. "Why? Are you going to phone me the newsletter?"
Don't do it yourself: Especially when e-mail lists are small, it can be tempting just to forego the many professional e-mail-sending services, and simply dump a list of addresses into Outlook Express before pressing 'send.'
This is a bad idea for several reasons. For one thing, it scales poorly. It'll be easier to manage your list in the future if you don't wait until it grows to an ungainly size before moving over to a commercial-grade service.
For another, administration will quickly become a nightmare. Commercial services automate the process of signups and unsubscriptions. Unless you want to turn into a spammer, sending mass-mail yourself means dealing with "Please remove me from your list" e-mails (which aren't always so polite).
Finally, sending large amounts of commercial e-mail from personal e-mail addresses is a red flag for the Internet's automated spam interceptors. Well-reputed commercial services are known entities, and offer a much better chance of your mail reaching its intended destination.
Ms. Kramer uses iContact, a web-based mail management service, to send her lists. Other popular services include AWeber and Constant Contact.
Do make sure you're spam compliant: Last year, Bell Canada released a study that found that of the approximately 45 billion e-mail messages they processed in a month, 44 billion were spam. To keep it in check, spam is under attack from all sides: consumers, software engineers, and – increasingly – lawmakers.
Both Canada and the United States have anti-spam legislation on the books – Canada's only came into effect in the last year. It sets out stringent opt-in requirements for commercial e-mail, including making sure unsubscribe options and contact information is in place. (Obtaining lists from third parties is a great way to get treated like a spammer by customers, software filters and quite possibly the law.) Penalties can run into the millions.
As scary as it sounds, this shouldn't be a problem if handled by a professional service – just make sure the service you use lines up with Canadian laws as well as American ones.
The series continues next Monday. Other stories can be found on the Web Strategy section of the Report on Small Business website.
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