What’s the next step in E-mail Campaigns?

Before you get the wrong idea, I love e-mail campaigns! I think they are a great and inexpensive way to drive sales. But across the board, companies are seeing that campaigns that used to bring in 30 or 40,000 dollars are now bringing in 7 or 8,000. Studies are showing that imbedding video in the e-mail or having links to video can increase conversation rates. But that doesn’t work for every market. Older customers may have no interest in watching video online and customers with a slow dial-up connection will have trouble opening it, which may cause you to loose customers! So what can we do to increase sales and keep customers?

The title of this post may be mis-leading, but it’s long as it is and I didn’t want to write “How can we make e-mail campaigns more effective and what is the next steep?” But that’s really what I’m talking about. E-mail campaigns aren’t going away anytime soon, but the problem is that almost every site asks for your e-mail address so that they can send you information and consumers are getting overloaded with e-mails. Many people now have spam blockers that can stop even ligament e-mails, and some are even on national “Do not e-mail” lists like the “Do not call” list. So for the few who will get your e-mail and SEE it, how can it stand out?

The first thing people will see is the title. It is important to keep this short and to the point so that when people are skimming their inbox, they can tell what your e-mail is right away. This is more important today more than ever before with smart phones. People check their e-mails with almost any phone now and the text is very small and short. They must be able to see your e-mail immediately if you want them to buy. If they don’t know what it is, they might just delete it. Years ago I had the idea of texting coupons to people’s cell phones. Some companies are doing things similar to this, but not exactly as I had in mind. Today, over three years after I first did my school project, I think cell phones are the next steep.

Instead of signing up for an Opt-In email on a website, wouldn’t it be nice to sign up for Opt-In text messages? Now this was originally intended for brick and mortar stores, but it can be easily adopted for online stores. If a customers shops at your store a lot, they are probably already on the e-mail list or mailing lists and get coupons as it is. But it is very easy to forget a coupon when you drive out the store, or have it get lost under a hundred other emails. But no one forgets their cell phone. So why not send the customer a text? They will be sure to get it and always have it on them. You might even get lucky and send it to them while they’re out shopping or at the mall and they can immediately go to your store and buy something. Also, if they get a text message, they are almost forced to view it before deleting it, where an e-mail can be deleted automatically. The cost for a text message campaign as large as an email campaign may be higher, but the principle behind it is a higher conversion rate which would mean the cost per conversion would be lower, or the same, resulting in higher sales and a higher ROI.

So are we going to see this soon? I work at company that has a very old target market and a cell phone campaign wouldn’t work because our customers don’t have cell phones. But for many other retailers, I think this could work. So what the hell, give it a shot and let me know how it works. If you want more information about my DECA project from years ago, send me an email. My website is: http://www.bsilverstein.info/.

Thanks!