Targeted email marketing campaigns take a little bit of time and patience to achieve success. Many people make the mistake of thinking that their email campaigns consists primarily of simply sending out emails. In fact, much of the well-planned marketing campaign should take place before a single message ever goes out to anyone.

You’ll want to begin by thinking about the purpose of your campaign, then the various strategies that you might use to achieve that purpose. This requires that you develop an understanding of your audience, the types of messages that they will be likely to respond positively to, and also the timing of the messages you’re sending out.

Discovering The Purpose of Your Email Campaign

This first step is so deceptively simple that many people forget about it entirely. They assume that sending out an advertisement is better than sending out no advertisement, so why not?

But think about it like this: you are about to send a message to a group of people who were interested enough in you and your products that they agreed to be contacted. What if this is the only message from you that they ever open? If there is no fundamental purpose for the message, then your only chance to connect with a highly qualified lead could be waste.

Don’t misunderstand–this does not mean that every message you send out should push the hard sale. That’s not going to work for most people either. But there has to be a reason for each message, something that it aims to accomplish. In many cases, this may be as simple as building trust. Email marketing campaigns are excellent avenues for building trust prior to asking for the sale, but you won’t build up that trust just by virtue of having sent out 400 words of copy. You need to be active in accomplishing the goal of your mailing, and it helps to have a clear idea of that goal in advance.

Marketing To Your Target Audience

The goals of your message should have a lot to do with the people it is being sent to. This goes above and beyond the standard demographic targeting, to looking at the types of actions that a person on your list has performed. If you are going to send out a sales letter, think about whether or not it will benefit you to send it to people who have already purchased your product. Or whether there is some add-on or up-sell that you could be pitching to them instead.

Imagine what would happen if you created a special list segment containing only people who have mentioned your product or service on their blogs. Now there’s a group of people to pitch a special offer to. Email marketing campaign software is essential for setting up this type of market segmentation in your email campaigns.

What Type Of Message Best Fits Your Email Marketing Campaign?

If people are signing up for your list after buying your product, your messages to them should be somewhat different than messages for people who are signing up from informational pages on your site. For informational subscribers, there is probably no better or more efficient strategy than to use email autoresponders to build up slowly to the call to action. This way you can lovingly hand-craft a series of trust-building sales messages that gently woo the potential customer, and deliver them over a tested period of time. The best part is that you only have to write the email series once, and then once the subscriber buys you can use 1-2-All’s subscriber actions to have them automatically switched over to your ‘relationship management’ list for existing customers.

Timing Your Email Marketing Campaign

I mentioned sending out your email campaign along a tested timetable. This is a really important piece of the email marketing puzzle, and one which will be different for every demographic and every product niche.

Most people just choose an arbitrary frequency to send their newsletters out, and try to stick with that schedule. This can be a good tactic for promoting an air of stability for your company. If this is your campaign strategy, you’ll want to set up a calendar or timetable for yourself so that you’re not rushing to produce sub-par content at the last minute every week or month.

On the other hand, sometimes it can be wiser to consider the natural fluctuations of your market. If you are promoting a seasonal product, no one is going to be interested in reading about it until the season approaches. So if you send out a newsletter every month, people will already be used to ignoring you by the time the appointed season comes around. In this case you will probably actually make more sales by not sending anything out for months at a time.

Direct marketing has been the leading form of advertisement ever since the invention of the printing press. It is more effective and efficient than any other type of marketing because it allows marketers to connect directly with their audience. By targeting specific demographics and studying the habits of your customers, you can open a direct window into the needs of your market. And, of course, the success of any business hinges on finding and filling a specific need for a specific group of people.

So by contacting each individual personally, you have a much greater opportunity to engage them in a discussion about what it is that they need and how it is that you can help them with that. And the more closely you are able to follow along with the nuances of each subgroup within your target market, the better you’ll be able to convince them that you have a solution for exactly what ails them.

There has never been a more powerful tool for achieving this type of direct dialog with massive amounts of people than through direct e-mail marketing.

That is one of the reasons why email marketing is far and away the fastest growing segment of the direct marketing industry. The latest Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) Communications Industry Forecast estimates the total 2008 spending for email marketing communications at $11.8 billion. When you take into account the incredibly low material costs for e-mail marketing, that is a staggering figure. Even more impressive is the 18.5% estimated growth rate for this segment over the next 5 years.

VSS Executive Vice President Eric Buhler states that email marketing “will be bigger than catalogs and comparable to telesales spending,” largely because it is just so cost effective. Compared to traditional brand management and mass advertising efforts, email marketing also provides a much shorter and easier path to measuring return on investment. The marketer can measure response at every step of the way, even going so far as to split test your most effective messages against each other in order to squeeze every last drop of consumer response out of your email campaign.

Return on investment is everything in this economy. More than ever, business owners are having to pay very close attention to how much money is going out and the rate at which it is returning. Even when it comes to a medium as efficient as email marketing, there are still difficult decisions to be made.

For example, the choice between using a hosted email marketing service versus a standalone email marketing software product. In a better economic climate, the choice to use a hosted service can amount to just a small slice of your marketing budget. But at a time when total advertising spending is down nearly 8%, the extra expense of using a service instead of an in-house direct email marketing solution is money that could be more effectively spent on a high-powered copywriter.

A survey is a method of gathering information from a number of individuals, known as a sample, in order to learn something about the larger population from which the sample is drawn.  Although surveys come in many forms, and serve a variety of purposes, they do share certain characteristics.  In order for the objectives of a survey to be met, the results must reliably project on the larger public, from which the sample is drawn.  A sample can be scientifically chosen so that each individual in a population has a known chance of selection.  This ensures that a sample is not selected haphazardly or uses only those eager to participate.  The sample size for a survey will depend on the degree of reliability necessary and how the results are to be used.  A properly selected sample should be able to reflect the various characteristics of a total population within a very small margin for error.  There are many surveys that study the total adult population but many others that focus on selected populations:  employees, academics, industry experts, computers users, or customers that use a particular product or service.

Some surveys focus on opinion and attitudes while others are more concerned with collecting factual information. Many surveys combine questions of both types.   A respondent could be asked what they heard or read about an issue, what they know about it, their opinion, how strongly they feel and why, interest in the issue, past experiences with it, and also certain demographic information which will help the survey analyst classify the responses (such as age, sex, marital status, occupation, and place of residence).  Questions can be open ended (“What does that make you think of?”) or closed (“Do you agree or disagree?”); they may ask the respondent to rate a product or a service on some kind of scale; they may ask for a ranking of various alternatives.  The questionnaire could be very brief – a few questions taking no longer than five minutes, or it could take a demanding hour or more of a respondent’s time.  A survey is usually rooted in situations where an individual or institution is confronted with an information need and no existing data will suffice. Once the information need has been identified and a determination made that existing data is inadequate, objectives are laid out for the investigation. These objectives should remain as specific, clear cut and unambiguous as possible.

Designing the questionnaire is a critical stage of the survey development process.  The questionnaire links the information need to the realized measurement.  Scaling techniques used for measurement can be comparative or non comparative.  If proper care and attention is not placed on clearly defining concepts and unambiguously phrasing questions, the resulting data is apt to contain serious biases.  Questions used in surveys must be refined to minimize interpretation problems and thus reduce measurement error.  If the respondent is unable to understand a question or fails to comprehend the question the way it was intended then the data is neither valid nor reliable.  A question must use language in a way that makes the intended observer’s meaning behind that question obvious.   In order to do this a survey must reflect an understanding of the population being sampled. For example, many people do not distinguish between robbery which requires the theft to be in the immediate presence of the victim and burglary which can involve breaking and entering without any confrontation.  The National Crime Survey, done by the Bureau of the Census, does not even mention the word “robbery” when it asks questions about robbery victimization.  Rather they ask several questions that use universally understood phrases, consistent with the operational definition of robbery, that when used together are able to capture the desired responses.

Keeping response errors and biases to a minimum factor heavily in designing a survey. How questions are interpreted by respondents must be carefully considered.  Also, you need to consider the length of the survey. If a questionnaire is too long than it can be burdensome to the respondent, inducing respondent fatigue that leads to response errors, refusals, incomplete questionnaires, and can contribute to higher non-response rates in subsequent surveys involving the same respondent.  Memory plays an important role when surveys deal with past events.  For most people the greater the demand a question places on memory, such as being asked to recall trivial details occurring on any given random date, the less accurate the responses and therefore the less reliable the survey data that is collected.  An appropriate choice of reference period should be made so that a respondent is not forced to report on events that happened too long ago.  Grouping similar questions together can reduce the cognitive burden a survey places on a respondent.  The validity of a survey can be put in jeopardy if questions are too sensitive, if they may prejudice the respondent, if they unduly invade a respondent’s privacy, and if the information that is sought is too difficult for a willing respondent to provide.

A web survey is one of five general ways research is typically conducted using surveys.  Surveys are also given using mail (the kind that requires postage), telephone, in-person interviews, and intercept surveys (respondents are “intercepted” as they pass through a heavily trafficked area).  The web survey most closely resembles the type of surveys which were traditionally mailed out.  Only this time you’re using email to send a link that takes you to an HTML form that is designed for completion and submission through the computer.   Information is collected quickly because as soon as your respondent has finished taking the survey, their responses are immediately submitted.  Web surveys can also be embedded on your web site using what is known as an Iframe.  An IFrame is an HTML element that makes it possible to embed an HTML document inside of another HTML document.   You can also create a Pop-Up survey on your web site so that when a site visitor visits a page the HTML form pops up from their web site.   If they have pop-up blockers enabled then this method will prevent them from taking your survey so you can also create a link to the survey which you can display on your web site.

The web survey is a cost effective way of administering a survey that allows you to collect large amounts of information without having to pay for interviewers, paper supplies or postage, and does not require separate data entry for responses to be processed.  The rise in web based surveys is due in no small measure to the increasingly widespread availability of computers.   Particularly in organizational or professional settings, the ability to receive a questionnaire and complete it at home or in the office on a computer is very convenient for most people.  You can expect to wait at least a few weeks for a questionnaire that is mailed out to a respondent to be returned.  A web survey allows you to rapidly collect data in a timely manner.   Information can be collected and processed in just a few days.    It also allows respondents ample time to carefully consider response selection and to enter in text for open ended questions.  If factual information is required then the respondent has enough time to consult their records.

You can increase response rate to web surveys by sending respondents a pre-notification of the intent of the survey.   This lets your respondents know what the survey is about before they invest any of their time into taking it.  You can also send follow-up reminders to respondents that have not completed the survey. This can be used in a situation where a respondent must complete the survey within a given date range.  Web surveys assume a minimal level of computer literacy so keeping your surveys simple can also help your response rate.  The technical nature of online surveys make them ideal for specialized or well defined populations that have access to an email account and/or a computer.  Coverage bias may result when targeting populations where computers or internet access are not widespread.  Determining an appropriate type of survey to administer to your respondents must take the population that is being measured into consideration.

It’s not reasonable to expect that you will profit off of all or even most of your subscribers.   What you can expect is that a few of your subscribers will pick up for the majority of your list members.  We call them your best customers and you must value them as a precious commodity if you expect to make a living or turn a profit out of your line of work.  When you begin to lose any of your best customers you will know it because it will impact your bottom line.  The majority of your customers are good customers and this is equally true of your subscriber list.  However, you’re never going to be profitable relying on good customers alone.  You can expect to be marginally profitable off of good customers at best.  A hard truth you will have to live with in whatever you do is you will have bad customers no matter how right you run things.  If you have spent any considerable amount of time doing customer service the notion of a bad customer does not sit right.  But there have been times where you approach a situation using logic and reason.  You provide answers or explanations that are helpful or point in the right direction.  You spend considerable time and energy focusing your attention on a person and their concerns.  You give everything you have and no matter what you do you know it won’t matter.  That’s what’s meant by bad customer.

If you are running things the right way this number should only come down to a handful.   Still it only takes a few bad customer to demoralize your employees with excessive complaints or demands. If they are not dealt with properly they can hurt your business with negative word of mouth.  Also, they can be a drain on your resources and not allow you to focus on your best customers who you depend on to remain profitable. As someone looking to protect your bottom line,  especially in tough economic times,  you must always be on the look out for ways of turning good customers into best customers. At the same time you need to be cognizant of handling bad customers and looking for ways to turn these customers into good customers.

The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is often referred to as the Pareto principle after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto.   He described the unequal distribution of wealth in his country as coming down to 20% of the people owning 80% of the wealth. Since then the 80/20 rule has been used as an organizing principle for understanding everything from time management, to running a business, engaging content in emails,  SEO, and of course managing your subscriber list.  This number is not set in stone but it can be used as a guiding principle for segmenting your list.

The exact breakdown of your numbers is going to be specific to your list and business.  What you are going to want to do is to find out which portion of your list accounts for most of your profits.  This is usually anywhere from 10% to 20%.  Find out which part of your list is marginally profitable or breaks even.  Should be between 60% or even as high as 70%.  Next identify which portion of your list you lose profits from.  This is the bottom end of your list which can be anywhere from 10% to 20%.   Now you’re going to want to find ways of moving some of those marginally profitable subscribers up your list so that they are more profitable and therefore best customers.  That way even if you lose a best customer your bottom line is not effected.  You are also going to need to decide what to do with the 10% or 20% that you’re losing profits from.  You’re going to want to find out if there is anything you can do to at least break even with them.

There are advocates for firing a bad customer and sending them off to a competitor.   How you deal with these customers depends on your business.   However, information spreads quicker than ever before.   How you conduct your business in circumstances that are difficult is noticed.  If you take the high road even in a circumstance where you know you are going to lose no matter what you may be surprised to find out you can gain the respect of even a bad customer.  Tell them you are sorry that things did not work out and that you wish them the best in their future endeavors.  Think of it as a breakup in any relationship.  Do not give them any reason to say anything bad about you.  Never burn any bridges.  Just like in relationship you never know but this person can come back in your life in a positive way.  Word of mouth spreads quickly. If nothing else the bad customer might be impressed with the way you conducted yourself and give you good word of mouth by telling people about that.

RFM Analysis

Although we never formally referred to it as RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value) we discussed this when we talked about targeting your best customers.   Doing a RFM Analysis is a great way to find out where your subscribers fall in line with the 80/20 principle.   It will also allow you to create a marketing strategy that is based on what kind of customers your subscribers are.   You can increase profitability by treating subscribers that make infrequent big item purchases differently from subscribers that make frequent small item purchases. Recency refers to how recently a customer made a purchase from you.   Frequency is how often they made purchases from you.  Monetary Value is how much a customer spends.  RFM Analysis gives you a way of quantifying your best customers based on their past purchasing behavior.

Lets show you how RFM Analysis works by opening up our own online music store.  We’ll assume that you worked out a licensing agreement with all the major record labels and each song costs only 99 cents and albums cost $9.99.  Because buying an individual song is only 99 cents we’ll count it as nothing until you get to 10 songs which is near the equivalent of an album.  We’ll use a 3 point system for the sake of simplicity.   3 points for customers that make the most recent purchase, 2 points for those that fall in the middle, 1 for those that have not made a recent purchase, etc.

Recency Score

1. Purchased at least 10 songs or an entire album more than a year ago.
2. Have not purchased within the quarter (3 months) but have within the last year.
3. Purchased within the quarter.

Frequency Score

1. Purchased 10 songs at 99 cents or an entire album with the last year.
2. Purchased at least 100 songes or 10 albums within the last year.
3. Purchased more than 10 albums within the last year.

Monetary Value

1. Average purchase amount is at least 10 songs an album at $9.90-$9.99
2. Average purchase amount is between 20 songs or a couple of albums at $19.80 – $19.98
3. Average purchase amount is greater than $19.80-$19.98.

Anyone scoring a 3 falls within the top 20% in regard to Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value.  Those that score of 2 are within the middle 60% while anyone scoring a 1 falls at the bottom 20%.  Anyone that scored a 3 on all categories is a best customer.  Those scoring a combination of numbers either fall in the middle 60% or the bottom 20%.  Pay attention to those scoring any variation of 3s and 2s as they are your low hanging fruit.  You should implement a marketing strategy that offers these customers an incentive for moving up to best customer.  RFM analysis is useful for identifying who your best customers are and for giving you an idea of what you need to do to turn good customers into best customers and bad customers into good customers.

In order to control the future you must control the past.  While you cannot rewrite the past in order to take over the future you can use it to predict it.  The past allows you to learn more about your subscribers so that you can then target your email marketing approach toward them.  When it comes to understanding your customers there is no better predictor of future behavior than the past.   Purchasing behavior is a response to an object of interest.  If behavior is recent then its more likely to happen again.  Perhaps that object of interest is a song you recently heard when you were around an acquaintance.  You really like the song when it’s played but you do not know who its from.  You spend the entire next day trying to remember who the song was from.  You would purchase if you only knew.  You completely forget about the experience the next day.   As an object loses its recency interest fades over time.

However,  if a positive impression is initially formed it can lead to purchasing behavior later.   This is why its important to work on forming good impressions with everyone you meet.  You had a positive impression of your acquaintance because they had something to offer you in the form of good music.  This did not translate in a purchasing decision the first time around but let’s see what happens when you run into the same acquaintance again.  By the time you run into them you are no longer interested in finding out who played the song you liked.  You do however trust their opinion so you can say they have established credibility.  When you are around them this time you hear a different song that you are impressed with.   This time you get your acquaintance’s number in case you forget the name of the song when you go out to purchase it tomorrow.   You become friends with your acquaintance and the more time you spend with them the more likely you are to go out and purchase music.  Interest peaks when exposure is recent.  Your subscribers are more likely to purchase from you in the period immediately following a mailing.   The longer they do not respond to a mailing the less likely they are going to.  You have a window of interest but after that they will forget about you completely.  One way of measuring purchasing behavior is by measuring when the purchase was made.  Before you met this person you were not exposed to music so recency was low.   Now that you are friends recency has increased.

The frequency with which an action occurs in the past can be used to measure interest.  You are now purchasing more and more music with greater frequency as a result of your friend.  The frequency of your product purchases is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend with your friend.  One other way of thinking about frequency is how it relates to exposure.  Have you ever played a song that you really liked over and over again until you got sick of it?  If you’re frequently exposed to a song then it sticks in your head and this is a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you think of the song.   The fact that you’re voluntarily playing the song over and over again means you are interested in it.

Notice what is happening here.  When your friend was merely an acquaintance they did not force their music taste on you.  They gave you a good experience by exposing you to what they considered good music.  They established trust with you.  When you later ran into them they were able to repeat the positive experience.  Credibility began forming and this led to a purchase decision. As your relationship progressed your acquaintance became a friend.  You begin basing your purchasing decisions on their judgment.   You do this because they demonstrated reliability.  Which led to an increase in frequency of purchases.

A good newsletter does the same thing.   It exposes subscribers to something that’s worth having.  The newsletters you send should be of interest to your subscribers.   If you are able to demonstrate how your newsletter is of interest you will establish trust.  From there you establish credibility by repeating the positive experience without being too aggressive.   Your subscriber is an acquaintance that is just getting to know you.  When you are able to demonstrate reliability to your subscriber they will begin relying on your judgment when forming the basis of their decisions.

Now an emerging need for treating different customers differently is apparent.  You’re not treating some customers better than others.  You are treating them like people and using their past behavior to govern your future behavior toward them.  Which of your customers recently purchased from you?   How many times did they do it.  How much did they spend on individual purchases?   You are asking yourself questions in order to learn which of your subscribers are your best customers so that you can target your marketing approach to them.   In the process you are attempting to turn acquaintances into friends by showing respect for the relationship.  A healthy relationship grows because it is mutually beneficial to both parties.

Now let’s consider monetary value and what it means to be a best customer.  Some of my favorite albums of all time have been concept albums such as Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born, The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife, Radiohead’s OK Computer, and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.  The beauty of a concept album is that you are not listening to it just for one song.  You have to purchase the entire album to appreciate the concept!  Every song is made fuller and richer by the songs that surround them.  They also have a powerful emotional component. Perhaps you’ve heard a song that you really like that led you to purchase an entire album.  Once you purchased the album that led you to purchase other albums from the band until you owned their entire music catalog. You then tried to turn your friends into fans of the music so that you wouldn’t have to enjoy it alone.  If you have then you would be that band’s best customer.  You would be one of the true fans that the band relies on to make a living.  Once you have a best customer you can market to them differently because they have demonstrated through their purchasing behavior that the relationship demands it.

You would market to a best customer for a band such as Pink Floyd differently than you would for a weaker customer.  A best customer may be interested in owning all of their albums in CD quality,  having all the original vinyl copies as well as digitally remastered CDs, box sets, concert recordings, T-shirts and posters, DVD footage of live concerts as well as documentaries, Nick Mason’s Personal History of Pink Floyd, and solo albums from the band members. Marketing all of these products would be of great interest to a devoted fan of Pink Floyd but would be of lesser interest to a fan who simply wants to have MP3 albums of their most seminal work.  Here you could use a newsletter to turn a casual fan into a best customer by giving them insider information on the band in order to strengthen the relationship that fan feels toward the band.  Meanwhile,  you could keep the devoted happy by offering them exclusive opportunities for material that would only be of interest to the band’s most ardent supporters.  One purpose for the newsletter would be to track live performances from surviving band members.   A best customer would not let money be an obstacle for going to see a live performances from David Gilmour or Roger Waters.  You could offer these subscribers the first chance to purchase the best seats available.  At the same time you could keep all your subscribers happy by offering all of them an opportunity to win free tickets.  The best part of having a best customer is the word of mouth advertising they provide.  A Floyd head will try to turn their friends into fans as well.   Perhaps some of these friends may later turn into best customers.

The marketing approach of your newsletter should address the needs of all your subscribers separately.   You are going to earn most of your revenue from your best customers.  So your challenge is to turn good customers into best customers and weak customers into good customers.

In marketing segmentation the total market is divided into submarkets that share characteristics that cause each group to share distinct needs.   If done properly each segment will respond in a similar fashion to a given marketing strategy.  When applied to email marketing this concept will allow you to build relationships with your subscribers so you can then send targeted mailings that are relevant to each group of subscribers.    By treating your subscribers as distinct groups with distinct needs your email campaigns will yield higher response rates.  You will not only get more results from your existing subscribers but you will lose a lot less subscribers if your mailings are relevant.

But what data should you use to divide your subscriber list into segments?   Previously we discussed how your newsletter should have a purpose that leads your subscriber to a clear call to action.  What is that purpose and what action are you calling on from your subscribers?

If the mailing you are sending is not relevant to all of your subscribers then they should not be included in your mailing.   This is a key principle of email marketing writing and one of the things that makes email marketing more powerful than other one-to-many advertising mediums. If you run a pet store you would not want to bother dog owners with coupons for cat food unless of course they owned both a dog and a cat.  Your job here would be to identify which of your subscribers had cats or dogs, owned cats but not dogs, owned dogs but not cats, or owned both.    In this example it’s safe to assume that your subscriber is not going to buy a cat if you send them a coupon for cat food.   Why bother your dog only subscriber with a mailing if you know they are not going to buy cat food?

Three areas to consider when breaking your list down into segments are:

• Demographic data – Consumer statistics regarding socioeconomic factors such as age, income, sex, education, location, marital status, and occupation.   This could be a good starting place for observing marketing trends.   People from similar backgrounds will often act a like and you can begin to observe patterns emerging.  While this is valuable for lending insight into general behavior, it cannot be relied up on as a predictor for individual behavior.   If the pet store coupon is for a premium pet product then someone with more disposable income may have more interest in your product.  Then again a single adult may be more indulging to their pet.   You never know when it comes to people and their pets.
• Preference and Opinion Data – Information usually collected by surveys, polls, focus groups, or through conversation.  This information can sometimes be biased in some way or another. There are many people that will tell you what you want to hear or what they want to be true rather than what is actually true.
• Behavioral Data – Using past behavior to predict future behavior is usually the most reliable data to collect.  Unlike preference and opinion data you are relying on someone’s actions and not what they say.   If your subscriber has used coupons to buy cat food in the past then this is the best indicator that they will actually use your coupon to buy more cat food.

Philip Kotler, an S.G Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, suggests that to be effective and useful to your business a market segment should have the following characteristics:

• Measurable – You need to find out its size, key characteristics, purchasing power, and preferences
• Substantial – Is the segment of interest large enough to be profitably served by you.
• Accessible – There is no purpose to segmenting if you already know that there is no practical way to access a segment’s members.
• Differentiable – Segments have to respond differently to different marketing programs.    If there is no difference in whether men or women buy certain cat foods, then there is no effective segmentation.

Once you have effectively segmented your subscriber list you can then target each segment.  When each segment is differentiated on the basis of their needs it allows you to send mailings that address those needs.   When you address those needs your mailings are relevant to your subscribers and they are more likely to respond.

Your relationship with your individual subscribers will change over time as you learn more about them.  Email Marketing provides you with metrics for your subscriber such as how frequently your subscriber opens your mailings, how often they click on your links, and you can also gain insight into their purchasing habits.

In client based marketing strategies individuals are treated as separate entities.   In marketing circles a widely held maxim says that 20 percent of your clients will come up with 80 percent of your revenue.  Keep the 80/20 rule in mind when it comes to segmenting your subscriber list. When developing your marketing strategy you are going to want to identify which of your subscribers make up the top 20 percent of your list and you will then want to pay special attention to them. 20 percent of your revenue comes from this group so they will deserve special recognition.   If you do not then you risk alienating them and losing a core segment of your business.   Find ways of showing your appreciation like thanking them over email while at the same time targeting them with incentives to purchase more.

Everyone must deal with bottom feeders that cost businesses profitability.   Those at the bottom 20 percent will often cost you business.   You will need to consider strategies for bringing this segment up to a profitable level.   The middle 40 percent is often high to marginally profitable.   By understanding their needs you can map out strategies for convincing these customers to invest more heavily into your company.   Always keep an eye on the middle.   These customers can move between marginally to highly profitable depending on how well you market around their needs.   Keep the 80/20 rule in mind when segmenting your list.  A good marketer will know how to use this rule to enhance their profitability.

The Internet has become increasingly interactive and community oriented. Perhaps, you never thought of social networking as a way of promoting your affiliate marketing program. I know it isn’t the first thought that popped in my head. That was not until I came across newsletter that made mention of using facebook applications for affiliate marketing. Come to think of it, I think we’ve all seen instances of social networking sites being used for marketing. Who hasn’t seen music bands or Hollywood movies take advantage of social networking sites such as Myspace to promote their commercial product? Or email marketing with FaceBook? That is because they act like major marketing tools and offer tons of traffic that can be targeted towards a niche market.

The huge traffic generated by these sites is a boon to affiliate marketing and their popularity as a way for people to connect isn’t something that will diminish anytime soon. Before using a social networking site for affiliate marketing thoroughly familiarize yourself of the rules of the site before you begin marketing your ActiveCampaign products. Be very clear about what you are advertising. Also, be aware of the audience you are targeting through your social networking site. Approach social networking sites in much the same way you would if you were creating a separate affiliate page for your products. Build trust with visitors by presenting them with benefits for buying the product you are promoting. Don’t just share your email marketing on social networking sites; share your most useful email marketing messages on the social networks.

At a recent Affiliate summit in Miami a speech was given on the relationship between affiliate marketing and social networking. You can view this video below:

]]> http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/social-networking-and-affiliate-marketing/feed/ 4