23 Oct Email Marketing: How Does it Work?
By Bob West
I recently heard a presentation from noted content marketer Marcus Sheridan who summed up his corporate communications / marketing philosophy as, ‘They ask. You answer.’
He believes a company’s blog should strive to answer any and all questions its customers have about its products and services. To that end, here’s a blog post explaining how we at Meister Media help companies market via rented email addresses, which is one of the more common questions I hear…
This relatively simple process includes 7 steps:
1. Meister Media has about 125,000 email addresses for growers, agricultural retailers, garden centers and so forth. A client could conceivably rent them all, but that’s not likely. In fact, our average email list rental this year will be about 4,500 names, so the process starts with clients providing parameters for us to build them a list. What industry do you want to target? If you’re targeting growers, do you want growers of a particular crop or sized operation? Do you only want targets in particular geographies (we can go all the way down to a zip code)?
2. We pull a list from our file based on your parameters. We share that count and the rental pricing (figured off the rate of $400 / 1,000 names + a $150 development and analytics fee). So, a list of 4,500 names would cost $1,950 for one-time use.
3. At this point, the client either chooses not to move forward, changes the parameters to revise the count somehow or commits to the send. If you commit, you pick the day of your send.
4. We can build the creative to be sent for a fee (typically about $350), but most clients provide it themselves. That’s what we need — the JPG or HTML file we’ll be sending, the From line of the email, the Subject line, URLs to which your edirect will link, and any of your own email addresses which you’d like to have included in the send.
5. We build the HTML file in our email platform and send you a proof copy for review / approval.
6. Your email gets sent on the agreed-upon date.
7. We provide full metrics on the edirect one to two weeks after it gets sent out.
Clients are showing tremendous interest in email-based marketing these days — we’ll execute 30% to 40% more sends for our clients in 2014 than we did in 2013. Don’t let uncertainty or inexperience stop you from incorporating this offering into your marketing program. Just ask us if you’ve got questions — we’re happy to answer them.
Bob West is the Director of Interactive Sales for Meister Media and responsible for the company’s email marketing efforts. Contact him with any questions you have at 440-602-9129 or bwest@meistermedia.com.