UK email lists for promotion and marketing

Why Choose E-Mail Marketing? UK email lists for promotion and marketing.

Definition

Viral and E-Mail Marketing is now by far the most dominant application for interactive marketing. Compared to traditional forms of direct marketing, marketing through e-mail is inexpensive, rapid, flexible, intrusive and highly accountable.

Overview

Here we outline the forms e-mail marketing can take to promote your company’s products and services effectively. It will highlight best practice, taking into consideration current EC law governing the use of e-mail as a promotional medium. The following key areas will be discussed:

• What do you want to achieve?
• Building a permission-based subscriber database
• Functionality and accountability
• Transmission
• Topic Areas

What do you want to achieve?

To promote an upcoming event, product launch or raise brand awareness within a select group of contacts, a one-off e-mail blast is advisable. An e-mail newsletter provides value-added service to your customers, while raising your profile and updating people with the latest industry developments.

Viral marketing is so called because of its ability to spread a message rapidly and exponentially, at a low cost. E-mail has effectively transformed ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing into something that can circulate the globe almost instantaneously.

Building a permission-based subscriber database

The best strategy with highly compelling content is useless without a decent list of contacts. E-mail marketing campaigns fail when companies rush out and buy e-mail addresses rather than growing their own lists organically. The data provided by Business Mailing is an ideal starting point to grow your own ‘opt-in’ email list. We suggest a single one-time email to the recipients in the lists we provide, utilising effective content to encourage the businesses to sign-up to your own ‘opt-in’ list.

The most ethical practice is to only send e-mail to people who have voluntarily agreed to give you access to their e-mail inbox i.e. ‘opt-in only’. This is the only way to be sure an e-mail campaign gets off on the right foot and this forms the kind of relationship between organisation and target that will get a message noticed and content read, instead of being labelled ‘junk mail’.

The entry of Directive 2002/58/EC into the Official Journal of the European Communities means opt-in e-mails is now the legally recognised way. Obtain people’s permission to send them e-mails at every possible point of contact: on your website, on the phone, through the post and of course by way of e-mail.

Functionality and accountability

Accountability is a very important aspect of any marketing campaign and an e-mail broadcast is easily measurable. Developing landing pages and/or employing link trackers from the e-mail can easily record recipients’ actions. Landing pages gather additional information before redirecting recipients to the page they want.

‘Unsubscribe functions’ are a legal requirement. Ethical e-mail promotions will have a clearly defined unsubscribe function, enabling recipients to be removed from a mailing list with minimal effort. This requires no more than two clicks; one from the e-mail to the unsubscribe landing page, which should then automatically populate a form with the recipient’s details, ready for submission.

Data-mining functions like opinion polls and send-to -a-friend functions are also commonplace in e-mail marketing. People like interactivity; offer something compelling and recipients will share it with their friends and colleagues, ultimately providing you with more contacts to target… but remember to ask permission.

Transmission

Reach an agreement with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) before even contemplating the broadcast of several hundred/thousand/million e-mails. If you don’t, you could be dumped and blacklisted by your ISP. Most ISPs will be happy to discuss the necessary requirements with you so just ask before clicking ‘Send’.

Mailing software will help you transmit the e-mails and is widely available for around £100. After studying the manual, compile your message and monitor any transmission to ensure every e-mail is sent successfully.

To receive invaluable feedback, send out a test run to at least 20 people who are preferably using different e-mail clients and who can give an honest opinion. Timing is critical; sending an e-mail promotion last thing on a Friday night will fail unless you are offering free drinks at their local pub. By Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, people usually have their inboxes under control and are more likely to give you their attention. Transmit your message overnight or during lunchtime to maximise your success.

Ask yourself:

What do I want to achieve with my direct marketing and could it be done through e-mail?

Do I have the technical expertise in-house to develop and send a functioning and accountable e-mail promotion?

Please Note – The above text is an extract from an e-business factsheet series developed by Scottish Enterprise. You can download the rest of the factsheet series by visiting
http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/ebusiness

Best Practice Transmission

Business Mailing provides email and postal data for e-mail marketing. We do not provide transmission or email sending services. We offer this guide on best practice transmission:

• Email marketing in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales
• Viral marketing to UK business

Many companies offer email & viral marketing sending services. We provide affordable solutions for SMEs and have provided data for hundreds of successful email and viral campaigns for companies throughout the UK.

How does email & viral marketing material get out there?
In short, you provide the material for your campaign to your web designer or email marketing agency, they design a web page, embed this in an email then send it out using their software to your intended audience. They send it out either as a targeted email or as a viral email.

Email marketing - web designers or email marketing agencies use special database systems to import the email addresses we provide and send them out. They create an email marketing page in either html or text format then submit this to the database. Emails are sent out with your special offer or sales pitch to everyone contained in the list. Each email is sent with an opt out instruction should anyone wish to be removed from the list. Our software also has the ability to track your emails, so you will know when your customers open them, giving both the date and time.

Agents can create multiple target area lists for your company's e-marketing campaign. For example, if you target business customers in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow or in fact anywhere in England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales; then you can target and send email or viral mailshots to each area separately.

Viral marketing - this can be extremely successful and can produce exceptional results. The best way to promote a viral marketing campaign is by using light hearted humour or by offering a very special offer or loss leader.(There are many successful viral marketing campaigns that have sprung up from a single email.) Viral emails are sent out to a small target audience with instructions for forwarding on to friends etc. Viral emails are not guaranteed to spread if the message does convey the right message.