You want to do what? Best practices in direct marketing e-mail campaigns

1. The list. There are many list sources you can buy targeted e-mails from. Wherever you get your lists, we suggest you send your campaigns to a list size of at least 5,000 people once per quarter. Expect to spend between $0.25 and $0.50 per e-mail.
2. The offer. Direct e-mails that offer a compelling content “offer” in the form of a free downloadable white paper or research report are significantly more likely to generate a response than promotional offers. Save the promotional offers for your print campaigns and for current customers.
3. The e-mail subject line. Keep it short. Study your own behavior when it comes to which e-mails you open. Tell what's inside, don't sell what's inside. If possible, test versions of your subject line to get an objective view of what actually works. But don’t overdue the testing!
4. The HTML creative template. Your campaign creative should match your Web site identity and offer a single call-to-action. For example, don't offer a free white paper download and a demo. Also avoid words like "free" and other words that a spam filter may catch. Use rich text in the body of your e-mail, not an image file with text, so that your cursor can select and scroll across each word. Finally, to track your online campaigns, place a tag at the end of your referring links which identifies the campaign from which the visitor originated (e.g., “?source=campaignXYZ”).
5. The landing page on your Web site. The branding should match your HTML creative that matches your overall ID on your Web site. Whatever appears on your landing page should reinforce the original call to action from the e-mail. The look, feel, and tone of the language should be congruent with the e-mail message. Images should reinforce the value of the offer.
6. The lead acquisition form. Many CRM applications provide custom code to integrate the fields on a Web form to fields in the company CRM. Other form scripts can generate an e-mail. In choosing fields for the form, at a minimum, collect the prospect's e-mail and name. You may also request a company name. However, going beyond this will reduce the likelihood of a prospect completing the form. Web forms intended to qualify a lead will invariably reduce overall response. So choose your strategy accordingly. Add fields like title, industry and company size with the knowledge that requiring this information will cause some prospects to abandon the process. For some companies, this is a worthwhile trade-off and allows for lead scoring and prioritization of follow-up. Tip: engage your sales team in this decision. What qualifies as a lead should be a matter of agreement between those generating and those receiving leads.
7. The lead. The best time to follow-up a Web lead is within 24 hours. A lot depends on the nature of your sales process, but the simple things like ensuring the sales team is ready to act on new leads are often missed. No form can replace the discovery and qualification process of a sales discussion and your sales team has a short window of opportunity to capitalize on the interest expressed by your prospects.

Labels: direct marketing, e-mail marketing, HR buyers, list rentals