# General Business Category > Marketing Forum >  How to run an email marketing campaign!

## Mirelle

Email campaigns account for half of the contents of my inbox. It's a mix of Nordstroms sales days, Yelp restaurant coupons, Travelocity deals, and iTunes music, plus a dozen newsletters I subscribe to.

I may be the target of a slick promotional campaign, but it doesn't feel that way. Thats the beauty of an email campaign that's skillfully executed. It's also the goal of professional marketers.

If you want your emails to dazzle your customers, read on. The low cost and ease of email marketing makes it an essential tool for business owners. Email marketing helps businesses:

get instant responses from existing customers. 
build long-term relationships with loyal customers. 
notify customers about a special offer or invitation.

_Send emails_
Databases integrate with popular mail programs: Outlook, Entourage, Apple Mail. The emails that you chose to send, are stacked in the drafts folder so you can schedule to send them on the right day at the right time for your recipients. Timing of the email is important. Business users arrive on Monday morning to a full inbox. Send your emails Monday afternoon or Tuesday. Also, if youre marketing to business people at their offices, send it early in the week rather than on a Friday. If youre sending to homes, recent studies show that Sundays are best!

_Process opt-outs_
You must provide info on how a recipient can opt-out of receiving your email by adding a line after your physical mailing address at the bottom of the email. The wording is similar to this, You are receiving this email because you or someone used this email address to subscribe to this email. To unsubscribe from this email, please reply with REMOVE in the subject line to discontinue receiving Special Offer emails from us.
Honor your customers wishes as quickly as possible after you send a message. Keep in mind that customers who dont want to receive your emails may change their minds..

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## Nienke

Hi Mirelle,

Any more tips&tricks for an email marketing campaign? Like to know more, since I don't want to p*ss people off with the emails I'm planning on sending them!

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## mother

I have yet to see an e-mail marketing campaign that does not p*ss me off!

Why?
1. The frequency of those e-mails (seriously, even weekly is pushing it)
2. The content of each e-mail (specials/giveaways/discounts/membership/prizes/limited offer... YAWN)
3. Where the %^$*# did they get my e-mail address?

So I would really also love to know how it should be done properly. If there is an effective way, I might just consider using it myself, but for now I steer clear of it.

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## Neville Bailey

I have been using MailChimp to send out my newsletters and to keep in touch with my client base (about 300 subscribers).

The important thing is to add value, not just push products. Also, it is critical that you only add subscribers with whom you already have a business relationship, so that there is an established level of trust and credibility in place. Otherwise, subscribers must join voluntarily and there must be an opt-out link on each message.

When I first embarked on my email campaign, my opening newsletter asked my client base what they would like to see in my newsletters and how often they would like to receive them.

I have had a lot of very favourable feedback from my clients so far, so hopefully I have got the right mix!

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## mother

Neville, your approach makes a lot of sense: Add value to subscribers who actually want your communications. And wow, I think 300 is a lot! Well done. Yay, motorhome on its way!

But does that qualify as an "e-mail marketing campaign"? Like the type Mirelle referred to here? I got the impression Mirelle was talking about advertising to the public at large, in the hope of gaining new customers. Now those type of campaignes still feel like an invasion of my privacy.

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## johnwarner75

Personally Im very suspicious with emails. The opt-out needs to be very clear (in fact its good if you can send a please-confirm-you-want-to-be-emailed- Email first) 

and never make them sound too sales-ey

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## Blurock

I like the way that Neville runs his campaign. Allowing people to subscribe and adding value in stead of sending it blindly to a mailing list is a cheap and effective way of keeping in touch with clients.

I get mad at the other types of ihopeyouopenthismailsoicansellyousomething e-mail campaigns which is is nothing but mindless cold calling. :2guns:

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## Nienke

> When I first embarked on my email campaign, my opening newsletter asked my client base what they would like to see in my newsletters and how often they would like to receive them.
> 
> I have had a lot of very favourable feedback from my clients so far, so hopefully I have got the right mix!


This is a pretty good idea for the Newsletter, and since my first one still needs to go out, I’ll definitely use this!. It’s also a great way to start of a two-way communication with my prospective customers and suppliers. 

But like Mother, I was also under the impression this thread was more about advertising. And since I’m totally new in the market out there, I need to find a way to promote myself first before I can send out newsletters to interested parties.

So far I’ve been reading  on this forum that call calling is not the way, email marketing is not advised and that plain advertising is a shot in the dark.

I was hoping this forum would help me out with giving me ideas on how to manage certain aspects of my business, but so far it only confuses me and advises me against all ideas I had in to get myself promoted out there. 

I do hope somebody has some good tips on how the proper way is to promote a completely new business, even if I don’t  have any leads or customer / supplier base yet. I can use a bit of positive enforcement!

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## mother

Nienke, what is your business/product and who is your target market?

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## Nienke

@Mother:
I'm starting an online site where customers can buy vouchers. These vouchers can be spent for booking an accommodation for free for 2 people for 2 nights. The only thing they need to do is have both lunch and dinner at the accommodation. From the accommodations perspective: This means a free room for guaranteed 4 dinners and 4 breakfasts.

The advantage for the accommodations is that since the customers pays us, it’s free for them. Also, this will only be at their low periods. An accommodation has on average an occupancy rate of about 50%, which means that half of the rooms are always empty.
So with us they can choose between an empty room with its costs involved, or a booked room with a profit against it.
This is actually a concept which is huge everywhere in Europe (UK, Germany, Holland, etc.), which we're now introducing here. To clarify: It is not a last minute booking, as there are many. This is accommodations using their knowledge about their occupancy in advance and use this to their benefit.

But to come back to the issue on hand:
Both my company as the concept is new and I am currently busy recruiting accommodations. I'm not yet open for business, because I want to present the customers a good choice, which at this stage I don’t have yet. Therefore I don’t want to go big yet on marketing campaigns etc. 
So I need to contact the accommodations, explain my company and my product to them. 

And here is the confusion from my side: Cold calling is not advised, sending ‘annoying’ emails is not advised, so I’m in a bit of a jam. How else to inform them about us?

Well, this is as short as I could get it, hopefully some good advice comes my way!

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## Blurock

Nienke, In your case you will have to do cold calling. This can be approached in different ways. Not a shotgun approach, but a well planned and organised strategy. 

You wish to recruit suppliers (B&B hotels etc) and customers (the paying public). How do you intend recruiting them? By phoning or calling them one-by one? The purpose of marketing is to communicate and inform. A press release is free and the most under rated form of advertising. This can be arranged with local newspapers, radio stations (do people still listen to the radio?) or in the form of a seminar for owners of B&B's, hotels etc. 

Take one area or town at a time and arrange a breakfast or afternoon cocktails etc. Once you have buy-in from suppliers, you can start marketing to consumers. This can once again be in various forms and may include a website, printed ads, mail shots pamphlets and the like.

A good CRM program may give you valuable feedback and allow you to tweak your offer and improve return business. Peter Drucker wrote "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous." If you have to use persuasive techniques or do a lot of personal selling of your product or service, then perhaps your marketing is not very effective. Do the groundwork and get the most effective message across.

Good luck with your venture. :Thumbup:

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Nienke (12-Aug-11)

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## Mirelle

In order to have a good marketing campaign, you must first define the image you want to portray. Then, you have to organize lists with contacts! You can use a time management solution, have you ever try Taskwise? You can sign up for a free account today, check out the website!

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## mother

> I'm not yet open for business, because I want to present the customers a good choice, which at this stage I don’t have yet.


Nienke, it sounds like a great idea. You have obviously done your research and you are confident this concept will work. Now your challenge is to "sell" this concept to your suppliers and customers!

I would imagine that getting your suppliers(i.e. accommodation) on board will be easier than convincing your customers, since the whole world still bears the scars of the "timeshare"-epidemic of years gone by, and all the "creatively underhanded" marketing campaigns they tricked the public into.

But, as you mentioned, you first need a good selection of suppliers. If I were you I would tackle one town at a time. Get all the suppliers you can from there, then launch that town on your website (don't wait until you have the whole country, because people search for accommodation by destination). And do your homework in terms of each supplier you contact, so you know exactly how many rooms on average they battle to fill during out-of-season periods. So you start with the supplier who needs you the most. Yes, you will have to phone them and convince them to sit through a presentation. And like Blurock mentioned, it will save you a lot of time/money/effort if you could see them all at once to present the concept to them over breakfast/lunch. Perhaps try and arrange such a breakfast/lunch presentation at the supplier who needs you the least, i.e. the one with the least number of vacant rooms during off-peak times - that might create the impression to all the others that the most successful one amongst them is buying into this, so surely they should as well. But be completely honest beforehand about what you are going to show them, don't lure them there under false pretences.

Now regarding the cold calling you're gonna have to do here, perhaps you could try something I did to help one of my Tutors with her marketing. We are in an extremely competitive and sensitive market, and she couldn't get past the secretaries to arrange appointments with school principals. So I wrote a very short personal e-mail (you standardise it, and just change the names) which I addressed to the school principal (used her first name, no surnames and no titles, and used her direct e-mail address), and the e-mail listed 3 MAJOR problems all schools face, along with the 3 solutions we offer (bullet points for a quick read), then ended by asking what time during the day we could phone her to make an appointment to explain these so she could "make an informed decision about our value...". This e-mail had a 90% success rate, in that they phoned us to make the appointments.

As far as reaching your customers are concerned, I would definitely consider facebook ads to promote your website. In my experience it is money well-spent on reaching your actual target market, since there are so many parameters you can set.

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Blurock (09-Aug-11), Nienke (12-Aug-11)

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## Blurock

Good advice mother!  :Lttd:

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Mirelle (25-Aug-11), mother (10-Aug-11)

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## mother

Aw thanx, Blurock. 

One more thing I forgot to add, Nienke... I would recommend you avoid the phrase FREE ACCOMMODATION. Everyone knows that absolutely nothing in life is free, and using that phrase (in my opinion), might make people suspicious, thinking you are hiding something. The truth of the matter is, they will have to pay for 4 meals in order to stay there, so in fact it's not free, it's just a bargain. Perhaps rather use a phrase like "you only pay for your meals", or something like that.  

Perhaps some other members would like to share their views on this as well?

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## Dave A

This really struck me:




> Peter Drucker wrote "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous." If you have to use persuasive techniques or do a lot of personal selling of your product or service, then perhaps your marketing is not very effective. Do the groundwork and get the most effective message across.


So how could we do that with Nienke's idea in fairly short order? Here's a thought:

Send an email  to your accomodation supply prospects that appears to be targetted at people looking for a novel, cheap accomodation option.
Hit them again a couple of days later with a similar message.
Call them the following day (if they haven't called you already) asking if they'd be interested in a novel way to get low season bookings...

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## Nienke

Wow guys, this is great and extremely helpful!

@Blurock: The idea to organize get-togethers in specific towns is a marvelous idea, especially since I can see it being nice for the accommodations to meet each other all. This will take a lot of work and planning though, but I'll definitely get on this one

@Mother: I am very impressed you got a 90% active response on your mailing. And I see why. The idea of letting them know you understand their problem and providing a solution straight away is pretty clever. I’ll go and change my standard email I’m sending out.
Regarding the ‘Free’ comment, I might agree on the one hand, but then again you do still get your accommodation, your room, for free. Yes, you pay for the food, but not for your room. But I must say, when I explain this to friends of mine, their first reaction is :”What’s the catch?”. Apparently you South Africans are very suspicious people! I’ll give this some thought, since this is what makes me different from the 1000’s of booking sites out there. 

I must say, I’m quite happy with my cold calling so far, the positive feedback is about 83%, with which I’m very happy with. I’m only very disappointed in the incredible long process I have to go through with each accommodation before they are actually signing up. The commit very early in the beginning, but this doesn’t translate in actual sign ups. Still need to figure out how to do this one.


All: Thanks a lot for all your input, you’ve given me even more work and things to think about then I already had! Much appreciated!

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## Blurock

> This really struck me:
> 
> 
> So how could we do that with Nienke's idea in fairly short order?


What Nienke is doing now is marketing. Marketing is a lot of hard work and elbow grease. Do it right and the sales will come from consumer demand, not from product push.  :Big Grin:

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## sikander7860

Hi

Is it possible to send an email to 1 Mil+ email users using a dedicated server? What are the precautions one could take?

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## Dave A

If you're asking the question, I suggest you're a very long way from being up to it. Sure, you'll be able to send them, but I wouldn't count on too many being delivered.

Ensuring mass email delivery is quite a challenge on a number of fronts quite apart from the actual content.

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## mother

Sikander, no offense, but I can't imagine what reason there would be for 1m+ people to receive the same e-mail, unless it was spam. What the heck do you want to send them? And who are these 1m+ people?

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## Blurock

:Gun Bandana: Shot gun approach. I hope I am not on the list for this spam! :Shoot:

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## sikander7860

lol. Nopes.. I was offered an email db... Just wondered how would one send it

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## Lee Hartman

Hi,

Nice post. I think there is a big difference between emailing existing clients and canvasing to new prospects. regarding prospect emails - I myself delete all almost all unsolicited mass-generated emails. I do however read emails that have been personally addressed to me and where the sender has taken the time to understand me or my business. This is obviously hard and time consuming to do.

T think there is an art to sending prospecting emails. The header is key. Needs to be interesting but not gimmicky. someone mentioned it should add value that's probably a good start.

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## Debbiedle

Hi Nienke - my advice is you need to get up to speed with social networking as a platform. Facebook will work well for your product B2C. I also think the mobile marketing route may work for you. (mxit, whatsapp etc)   Good luck!

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## Nienke

I thought giving you an update what’s going on so far:
I’ve done a lot of cold calling. Before I do this, I try to get some info from the accommodations by going to their website. I try to figure out who to contact and then give it a go.

On the one hand, it works perfectly, on the other hand, it’s more difficult than expected.
The good thing is that the reactions are very positive, over 80% wants to know more about our concept. This is way higher then expected, since accommodations are called a lot with people trying to sell them stuff.
What is disappointing is that it takes a long time before they sign up on our site: I call them, and send them info by email. After a week I call again, and usually send them some more info. After another week, I call again, and if needed send them more info.

I know it takes about 7 contact moment before you can sell something to a customer, but I guess I never realized what this means. 

At the moment, I’ll continue cold calling, because it’s rather effective, and after a couple of weeks I’ll go to the ‘email bomb’, as I call it. And I’ll definitely be using Mothers tips:
“and the e-mail listed 3 MAJOR problems all schools face, along with the 3 solutions we offer”

But also try to do what Lee mentioned. It should be personal.

Again, thanks everybody for your tips and tricks, it has certainly helped me!

Oh, and if you know of an accommodation who wants to apply, let me know, you can even win some great prices!

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## Mirelle

> Hi Mirelle,
> 
> Any more tips&tricks for an email marketing campaign? Like to know more, since I don't want to p*ss people off with the emails I'm planning on sending them!


Hi Nienke! I will suggest you to follow my favorite productivity blog Blog.taskwise.com. Here you can find a lot of useful online marketing strategies  :Smile: )) Have a great day!!!

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## nikol

According to me you that after optimizing an email delivery system, test it with a content checking service to see if it appears like spam. This avoids the messages being sent immediately to junk folders.

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