Email Marketing for Construction (Part 1 of 2)

This blog (Part 1) will cover email marketing basics, and email tips and tricks. Email Marketing For Construction Part 2 will share testing tips, measuring email campaigns, and a Glossary of Terms.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the first social media. Long before blogs, Twitter and Facebook, marketers used email to communicate with customers and prospects in a similar mode as direct mail. Deploying a message to a list, with an offer, to generate a response.

The elements of email marketing include the list, the email layout and copy, the subject line and the offer(s). Most emails are distributed by email software or an email service provider (ESP). For a modest fee, the ESP provides an interface to design or upload the email (copy, images, html files), upload or manage lists, and provide metrics or dashboards on campaign results. The ESP also has built-in features for opt-outs and removal of duplicates (de-dupe).

Why Consider Email Marketing?

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! Email is not dead. On the contrary, email marketing is growing. According to a January 2011 survey by BtoB magazine, 63% of respondents were likely to increase spending on email in 2011 (second only to websites) with 29% keeping spend constant. Also, The email Marketing institute recently released Q1 2011 email results stating, “North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results showed a 39.2% increase in average volume per client from 2010 to 2011.”

The major reason to consider email marketing is because it works, and in comparison to direct mail, email is a bargain. While list costs (when required) may be similar or slightly higher than mail, email does not have printing or postage costs. And when using email software or an ESP, the metrics or campaign measures are robust including open-rates, click-through-rates (CTRs), bounces and opt-outs. The immediacy of email is untouchable by any other marketing medium. And the combination of metrics and immediacy allow you to test subject lines, even offers (more on testing later). Certainly email integrates nicely with websites and e-commerce. And email campaigns can easily be customized, personalized and otherwise targeted to the individual or market segment. Finally, email lends itself to ongoing communications with customers and prospects who opt-in to newsletters and related communications.

But email marketing is not perfect. In email’s infancy (around 1998-2000), open rates and click-through-rates were stratospheric until spam-blocking firewalls rained on the parade. Then anti-spamming legislation almost killed email. Now with spam-ware adopted by all email hosts, email open rates are much lower, averaging 10-20% for a business-to-business category (including construction).

Despite these issues, with the marketing mix rapidly evolving to internet, SEO and social media, email is an important conduit to these electronic assets. And the promise of communicating quickly and inexpensively to captive customers and opt-in lists generated from all these internet assets is to good to pass-up.

So the holy grail of email marketing is how to be more effective. How to maximize campaign effectiveness. To that end, the balance of this blog will share email marketing tips and tricks!

Email Tips and Tricks

1) The List: the foundation of any email (or direct mail) campaign or program is the list. Obviously, home-grown customer lists have the highest potential for opening, followed by opt-in email lists from a variety of your own sources. The problem with email lists in business-to-business is employee turnover. A good portion of email (or mail) lists become inaccurate over time, thus requiring ongoing efforts to purge hard-bounces, or non-deliverables (reported by most ESPs).

Purchased lists are available from publishers, associations, list brokers and online databases. List costs typically range from $100-$400 per thousand records. Often the list seller will not provide the list, but will distribute your email to their list to maintain control. Following is a list of sources for your email list.

Sources of Email Lists

• Publisher lists
• List brokers
• Association lists
• Online databases
• Website registrations
• Website contact forms, questions
• Customer phone inquiries including RFQs
• Sales contacts
• Email has forward to friend feature
• Trade show scans
• Warranty registrations
• LinkedIn connections
• RSS registrations
• Research people and companies using directories like Jigsaw

List hygiene, or continually cleaning your list is critical to email success. When using an ESP, un-subscribers or opt-outs will be automatically purged from the list. If not using an ESP, you must perform this task manually. Hard bounces are invalid email addresses and should be removed form the list. Soft bounces should be tested as these can be out-of-the-office auto-responders or server issues on the client-side.

2) Email Design: there are 3 elements to be considered with each email design—subject line, layout, and offer(s) or call-to-action.

One of the most basic email success factors is to avoid spam subject lines. Spam filters are employed by most email providers today. Each closely looks at the subject line and message body to determine the likeliness of spam. Here is a list of what spam filters hone in on that you should avoid:

• Free / Act Now / All New
• 50% Off Call Now Subscribe Now
• Earn Money Discount Double Your Income
• You’re A Winner! Million Dollars Opportunity
• Compare Removes Collect
• Why Pay More Special Promotion Information You Requested
• Amazing Cash Bonus Promise You Credit
• Loans As Seen On Buy Direct
• Get Paid Order Now Please Read
• Don’t Delete Time Limited While Supplies Last
• Stop No Cost No Fees
• Satisfaction Guaranteed Serious Cash Search Engine Listings
• Join Millions Save Up To All Natural
• You’ve Been Selected Excessive $ or !

We recommend testing subject lines, to be covered in the next blog.

Regarding email layout, simple and brief is a good start. A combination of copy and visuals or images is another key. Treat the email layout like an print ad with a strong headline, light support copy, and clear offer (big buttons are good!). Email newsletters can have multiple content areas, but ideally, stay away from long-copy and use abstracts with READ MORE hyperlinks to full text. The added advantage of links is the opportunity to measure the click-through.

Always have complete contact information including phone, website, email, and links to your social profiles. Ensure that the unsubscribe link is easy to find.

Following is a sample of an email design from Construction Marketing Advisors targeting architects, which included a product highlight, as well as a project spotlight:

3) Email Software and Email Service Providers: we recommend using email software or an email service provider for all email distribution. Why? If you mail from your own email system, you can be blacklisted by the receiver. Second, ESPs will optimize against spam filtering. As mentioned, ESPs provide user-friendly tools for list management and even design. And ESPs offer great dashboards for measuring your email campaign. Finally, ESP fees are very reasonable.

List of Top Email Service Providers (ESPs)

1. iContact
2. Benchmark Email
3. Constant Contact
4. Mailigen
5. Pinpointe
6. Campaigner
7. GraphicMail
8. Vertical Response
9. MailChimp

4) Other Tricks of the Trade

One of the most important considerations for email success is timing, or when you distribute the email. For business-to-business markets, we recommend Tuesday through Thursday, after 9:30 am, or 1:30 pm. Why? Because Monday morning will have a back-up of email, and coupled with staff meetings, email will more likely be deleted. Also, emails overnight will be more likely deleted due to the quantity of other emails everyday. Fridays in the summer, forget about it. If you are doing nationally distributed emails, be sure to take into account different time zones. If marketing to consumers, weekends are actually preferred timing.

Another consideration for email success is frequency. If you bombard your list with emails, recipients will unsubscribe. If you email twice a year, there will be no continuity. Somewhere in between is a happy medium. Each scenario is unique. Do your customers and prospects use or buy your product (or service) frequently? Is your product complex, or require a lot of information, generate questions? A rule-of-thumb would be no more than weekly, and no less than quarterly. This is why a monthly eNewsletter is popular frequency, delivering continuity wihtout annoying your target audience.

Finally, to ensure deliverability, add a message to your emails along the lines of: ‘Please add _______@yourcompany.com to your address book to ensure that you receive our emails”. Again, ESP software may have this feature.

Check back soon for EMail Marketing Part 2!