Measuring the Effectiveness of Email Blasts

Old habits are tough to break and one of the oldest in email marketing is the idea of sending one email to everyone on your list.  There are a number of reasons why this is a bad idea but perhaps the biggest is that no one likes them. Businesses and the internal marketing teams, or those charged with that responsibility, don’t have the time, interest, or patience to craft messages specific to each sub group within the database.  So they queue it up and press send.  That’s a big mistake.  If the person in charge of your online presence doesn’t take the time to execute these campaigns in as personal a manner as possible they risk offending your prospects and clients.  An ‘unsubscribe’ is as good as a “thanks but no thanks.”  And you’ll know quickly. Once your campaign has been sent, come back in twelve hours and take a look at how many people unsubscribed.  If it’s more that a couple that’s bad.  It means they’re annoyed or not interested and you’ve lost a subscriber, or worse a customer.  So don’t do it.  Invest in an email marketing campaign that will personalize every email.  Breakup your list into sub groups.  Push emails automatically once per month and only send group emails for special events that the majority of your audience will be interested in.  Use your blog and social accounts to keep the message going daily and weekly.  Pay attention to your own habits when you get an email blast.  Remember too that building a book of business and collecting emails is really hard work and losing them to an annoying email blast is really easy.  Value and respect your customers and they will reward you with their loyalty.  The real issue is that in our rush to get new business we push too hard.  That’s what an email blast is, it’s a pushy tactic that disrespects your audience.  We’re all busy people and we all get a lot of emails we don’t want.  But if your email is educational, informative, and will potentially save your customers time and or money, then craft it carefully and target it only to the people who really might be interested in what you have to say.  Earn the business over time.  If you want orders today there are some very effective techniques.  Email blasts are not one of them.