Reach Customers Online

Do-It-Yourself Email Newsletters For Businesses

Please note this article is a general interest piece that describes how a few small businesses have used no and low-cost email newsletter software to reach their customers. I’ve written how-to articles elsewhere, specifically, How to Build a Basic Email Marketing Capability.

Potawatomie Indians, the Jesuit missionary Marquette, the explorers LaSalle and Cadillac, and more recently tourists in tank tops, spandex shorts, and RVs, they have all trekked north to remote Sister Bay, Wisconsin, current population 886. And thousands of internet tourists have visited through local websites like one site run by Country Bear.

Country Bear has sold Beanie Babies®, candles, lamps, and stationery since 1997. In 2002, their human tourist traffic dried up as the local economy soured. At their store, a single story grey cottage with white trim, sales dropped by half. Fortunately, the Country Bear internet site and email newsletter generated two-thirds of their revenue last year.

Email newsletters might appear to be a vast terra incognita for small and medium sized businesses, even if they have marketing and technology staff. However, email is tempting. It can be a very low cost way to find and keep customers.

Country Bear has used email to keep in touch with customers from the very beginning. “Email newsletters are the key communication for our business outside of our website,” Karin Hankwitz, owner of Country Bear, explained. “We use email to announce new products, sales, retirements, special hours, promotions, and just to stay in touch with customers, remind them that we’re here.”

Email newsletters also have been the key to their internet success and company survival. In 2001, for every 1000 emails Country Bear sent, an average of 10 people placed orders within 72 hours. “We are not able to float on in-store sales alone anymore, so we’re following the money,” Hankwitz said. “Right now it happens to be online.”

Small businesses can acquire email newsletter capability three ways. MSN, Yahoo!, and Topica all deliver email newsletters if a business allows ads to be placed in their newsletters. There are open source software tools like Mojo Mail and phpList that are easy to configure and use. Businesses also can outsource their email newsletters for free or small monthly fees to Email Service Providers (ESPs) like CoolerEmail, List Channel, DoubleClick, and Ezine Director.

Country Bear started with MSN for their email newsletters. “It worked beautifully for some time,” Hankwitz said. “Until they started sticking ads in it. We received many complaints off that.”

When the Microsoft service switched to charging money to send email newsletters, Country Bear switched to Mojo Mail, a free open source software tool. “I imported my list to Mojo and was up and running in a day. Mojo was faster, cleaner, and better than the web based service ever was. Mojo Mail continues to be aggressively developed and we are just thrilled with it. It does exactly what I need.”

If installing open source software sounds too complex, businesses can work with Email Service Providers (ESPs) that charge a monthly fee to send email on their services.

That’s what Ramona’s Baskets in Vancouver, Washington did. Ramona Lupo, the owner, had been hesitant to market online because she lacked secure ecommerce capabilities on her website. She also did not feel rushed. Many of her customers used her website to learn about additional gifts before they called to order gift baskets.

When she was ready to tackle email newsletters, after about four years of maintaining her website, Ramona Lupo asked her web designer, Kara Chanasyk of White Lotus Design, to find an email newsletter vendor.

Chanasyk chose Ezine Director because they allow their customers to send up to 999 email a month for free. “You can’t beat free,” Chanasyk said. “It allows us to experiment with minimal financial risk. In addition, we can send html email that delivers the website into the personal space of a customer’s email inbox. That’s powerful.”

So far, Ramona Lupo likes the results from using email newsletters. She has done two mailings, one before Christmas 2002 and then Valentines Day 2003. “I have tracked 25 sales from the Christmas email and 10 sales from Valentines,” Lupo said. “But Valentines Day is a smaller holiday. And I probably got orders from people who read my email and called me but did not mention the email.”

Recent research from DoubleClick found that 60% clicked on an email link to buy and 59% purchased in a store after they received an email from a merchant they recognized. Email reminded these customers of the merchant and, in many cases, triggered a sale.

Sending email is not enough, however. Tracking the number of emails opened and links clicked can help plan future email campaigns. For example, a low open rate might indicate a poorly written email subject line. Service providers offer reporting for open rates, bounce rates, and identity of links clicked. They also have tools to manage spam reporting by subscribers and handle bounced emails.

The choice between do-it-yourself and email service providers hinges on your tolerance for complexity as well as other issues.

One issue is bother. The hassle of handling subscribes and unsubscribes will probably drive anyone to ditch their Outlook or Eudora email software in favor of other tools. Even if someone wanted to do so, internet access providers like AOL, MSN, and Earthlink limit the number of emails that can be sent simultaneously from one account.

Customer complaints about spam are another issue to consider. The risk of emails being reported as spam is low if a business knows every customer on their email address list. “A big part of publishers avoiding being listed as spam starts in their own backyard,” Brent Livingston, owner of Ezine Director, explained. “Publishers must embrace responsible practices like sending information to individuals who have requested it, providing a consistent title within the publication for immediate recognition, and respecting the wishes of individuals requesting to be removed from a list.”

If you use Mojo Mail or other do-it-yourself software, and your email is blacklisted as spam, you will have to figure out how to remove yourself from spam blacklists. These lists are often secretive and tough to contact. Reputable email service providers, in contrast, work proactively to get all their clients on spam whitelists and off blacklists.

Besides a choice of delivery technology, email newsletters require a set of familiar direct marketing skills. There are differences, however.

“The number one mistake I see is how organizations build their house list,” according to Jeanne Jennings, a consultant who has developed over 170 email newsletters. ”With traditional direct mail, you can mail anything to any address no matter how the address was acquired. Permission-based lists respond better online. This is true with large and small clients.”

Buying email addresses can be problematic. Some lists are harvested with software that trolls websites in search of email addresses to steal. Lists from legitimate list vendors can generate complaints if their subscribers view an email offer as different from what they signed up to receive.

“Email copy must be concise and clear,” Jennings added. “Your email From line, subject line, and the first screen of your email are prime real estate to attract or lose customers.”

Email newsletters should be used to build customer relationships. “Be sure to provide value to your customers, listen to feedback and think in terms of ‘what’s in it for them’ – balancing that with your needs as a small company,” Jennings said.

Results from email newsletters can be known within 72 hours. Multiple offers can be created and tested quickly based upon prior results. Traditional direct mail takes weeks to achieve similar results. Email can reach a broader audience more cheaply.

Ten years ago, a slow economy shuttered businesses like Country-Bear. Today the internet brings in business from online tourists. “Email newsletters are responsible for some very nice traffic spurts,” Hankwitz said. “Anytime I send out a mailing, we get easily double the daily traffic over the next 24-36 hours. My next concern is to turn even more of that traffic into sales.”

Resources Mentioned In This Article

http://www.country-bear.com
http://www.ramonasgifts.com
http://www.whitelotusdesign.com
http://www.jeannejennings.com
http://mojo.skazat.com (Mojo Mail)
http://www.phplist.com
http://www.ezinedirector.com
http://www.cooleremail.com
http://www.imakenews.com
http://www.listchannel.com
http://www.doubleclick.com

DoubleClick 2002 Consumer Email Study

To learn about best practices for email newsletters, browse these websites periodically:

http://www.clickz.com
http://www.ezine-tips.com
http://www.marketingprofs.com
http://www.emailsherpa.com

If you have $200 (serious money for some), Marketing Sherpa sells a report they did on 52 Email Service Providers, Buyers’ Guide to Email Broadcast Services for Marketers & Publishers: How to Pick a List Host. To get started, however, any of the ESP vendors or open source software tools listed above will be enough for most businesses. Once you have proven that email works for your business, then the MarketingSherpa report might prove very useful if you need to graduate to the next tier of service.

[NOTE: I'm not an affiliate of MarketingSherpa or any vendor. I make no money recommending them to you. I make money from consulting and writing. My recommendations are based on hands on experience as well as interviews with trusted characters.]

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