We started sending email marketing mailers half-heartedly almost 3 years after we started our Service Apartment business. Want to know what all we missed?
My Pain:
The questions that were bothering me…
How do I start email marketing?
Do I need an email marketing Service Provider Platform (ESP)?
Will my customers read my marketing mails?
If yes how many leads can I expect?
How to manage customers who do not want such marketing mails?
How should I plan my content for the email marketing?
Bottom line – What is the overall email marketing effectiveness?
My experience:
I am sharing my journey so far…
Trustedstay Service apartments in Bangalore had a database of 15000 customers in CRM when we decided to start e-mailers.
We decided to use our Google mail to send our e-mailers.
Step 1: Mail body: We decided on the content (e.g. New property that we added or it could be Greetings for new year/festival etc.) Based on the google search we were clear on certain things like content to be only in text and not HTML format, no heavy attachments or JPEG images as we were told that your mails could land up in customer junk folder.
Step2: Subject line: Here we got a very useful tip from the internet that more than 90% of the customers will ever open your mails. Hence, we decided that Brand name should appear in the subject line. Even if the customer decides to delete it, you would have bombarded his mind with your Brand name. Be careful not to have “special characters” or “Free Gifts” in subject line else your mail may land up in customers spam folder. Our typical subject lines were
TrustedStay is now closer to the IT hubs in Bangalore
Food Friends and IPL at TrustedStay Service Apartments
Relocating to another city, think of TrustedStay.
Trustedstay adds more Service Apartments in Kolkata
etc.
Step3: Sending Mails: We had a Gmail ID. Google mails cautions you not to send more than 1000 mails in a day else the mails may land up in customers junk folder. From the email master sheet, we copied 50 email id’s and pasted in BCC & addressed to self-mail ID.
We fired 20 batches of 50 emails to our customer per day totalling 1000 mails and completed sending all 15000 in 15 days.
Results: Over the period we became quite consistent and started shooting mailers every quarter. Here are the typical results for every 1000 mails sent. The information below will set your expectations. The data below has been derived out of a total 5 lacs e-mails sent.
Leads: 0.3/1000: 1 customer in every 3000 mails sent, will respond
Unsubscribed: 0.06/1000: 1 customer in every 15000 mails sent, will ask you to unsubscribe
Openers: No data. This is number of customers who opened the mail
Clickers: No data. This is number of customers who clicked on the link in the mail body.
During this process of email marketing you may get many bounced mails as the customer may have resigned or the domain of that company may have changed.
Make a list of it and refer our Blog: Customer resigned? Never Delete from your database
Issues: We had certain issues from above process like,
- Manually removing email ids from the master list for unsubscribed customers.
- We were in the dark on how many people were actually opening our mails.
We actually got carried away after seeing small companies sending professional looking mails with images & links. So, we decided let’s give it a shot.
After Google search and friend recommendations we found that Mailchimp is the most popular ESP (Email Service Provider)
The Benefits were many like
- You could create your professional content page with images and logo on your own.
- There is no restriction on mails/day. You could shoot all at once (PS: First 3 email marketing campaigns you will not be able to send in one day there is a warmup process it may take 10-15 days depending upon your database size and secondly if you do not have an opt-in process of database from your website then you have to use a static IP)
- It gives all the analysis of how many customers opened, who are those customers and how many times they opened the mail.
- What all images and links they clicked.
- Managing unsubscribing was easy the ESP platform automatically prevents sending the mailers next time once the customer unsubscribes it.
But unfortunately, MailChimp was too expensive so we zeroed down on a cheaper option called SendInBlue which has a support in India and its ESSENTIAL PLAN costs just Rs. 2343 for up to 60,000 email blasts with validity of 30 days. They also have lower version but we were clear we wanted to have our Logo.
We started using SendInBlue ESP for our quarterly emailers.
Results:
Leads: 0 : No customer ever responded to our mail.
Unsubscribed: 1.5/1000: 3 customers in every 2000 mails sent will unsubscribe.
Openers: 76/1000: 76 customers in every 1000 mails sent will open the mail.
Clickers: 22/1000: 22 customers in every 1000 mails sent will click on the link.
My Conclusion:
For our kind of small operations my conclusion is go with basic text content through Gmail instead of a ESP. And do it religiously once every quarter.
Your customer perceives such text emails as personal and he tends to respond ending up into a query and a very few ask you to unsubscribe.
And my personally belief is because today every Tom Dick & Harry is sending fancy mailers thru ESP the customer sees it as spam and tends to unsubscribe. However, I am not saying that ESP is not a useful platform it may be a good platform to reach out to new customers thru call to action landing pages etc. If anyone disagrees with me I am willing to respond.
Also Checkout:
35 Comments
Don’t you think in the times of social media a email is dead?
Dear Mr Rajan. I have shared hard facts on email marketing after sending almost 10 lacs email to our database over time. Now you may still want to call it dead then its your choice but the way I look at it is that even if I get 10 leads from a database size of 30,000 then its not bad for me. Thanks for your opinion
Dear Gopal,
Now a days direct email marketing is not much effective. Like my self book service apartment or accommodation mostly using online booking application for instance. Red bus app, Booking.com, trivago etc., Most of doesn’t have time to open marketing emails, most of our email software / client filters the email and process them in Junk / Spam folders and we seldom check Spam folders specially in private email IDs like Gmail / yahoo etc. This is my few cents of feedback.
Dear Mr Jaggannathan I agree and this is exactly what I have mentioned in my blog too. I have even shared the expected results from a email marketing campaign. But important point to understand is that even if I get 10 leads from a mail campaign sent to 30,000 of my database is not bad deal.
Nice. Very informative and promotional.
Thankyou
Very useful tip. In small bussinesses like mine I would prefer manual email sending over ESP.
Yes Dipika , this is the point even i highlighted in my blog too.
Yes basic text content sent quartely manually makes sense. Also there is a provision where emails can be sent as quartely reminder via whatsapp too. I may be off the topic. Can you share about whatsapp effectiveness. In all this.
Look any touch points with the customer be it email, SMS, Social media or what’s app is a good idea. But important is not to over do it. Thanks for your inputs.
it is good analysis. Try to use Search Engine Optimisation of your website so that more customers will visit your webaite
Yes Mr Nikhil SEO is also important. Thank you for your inputs
Very informative and based on genuine research. I have an ecommerce website on shopify platform. I am using an app called Omnisend , well integrated with our store. There are several automated features making it quite easier to send mails.
Thank you Ashish to know that my blog was useful
Good insights indeed . I would prefer to respond in the context of DIGITAL marketing , e mail being an integral part of it among other media.
Now, the target group is of great importance here . The figures quoted by you on opened / read/ unsubscribed/ replied suggests that thos was a cold contact .
An ‘Optimised’ database may have given different results ..since the fundamentals (like size, fonts, punch line , subject line etc) have already been taken care of.
The point I am making is about the target group’s demographics . Are these frequent travellers ? Are they very senior execs ? Is it largely for business travellers or is pleasure / personal travel in scope too ?
Also, with OYO , Fab and Air BNB kind of large aggregators , what are those 1-2 things that Trustedstay can do which they cannot .
In conclusion, digital marketing will need to be viewed as merely a medium ( digital) . Like any other form of marketing , it is the MARKETING fundamentals that will finally decide how effective the exercise would be .
An example : It’s been a long lockdown . Cars have been parked unused in the parking for a long period of time. Several problems with that —
1. Flat tyres , 2. Battery drained , 3. Fuel tank empty , 4. Needs wash and vaccum cleaning , 5. Breakdown maintenance etc etc .
What if there is an email or a text saying the following today —
1. We have the Govt Covid passes
2. All of the above in scope of the onsite service
3. Service charges in line with the urban clap kind of services. . Very affordable .
Target group – all car owners . Even more refined — all car owners with cars > 3 years .
Wonder what would be the response ? My guess is that it will be excellent . Reason — the Customer NEED is central here and the customer is right in the center.
Here the email or text was chosen not to carpet bomb and hope for the random response . It was a genuine attempt to cater to an unfulfilled need .
Thanks Mr Prashant for your advise, will surely work on your suggestions.
It was quite Elobrare and informative..
Thanks Mr Ravikumar
It’s a candid report of deep analysis & the efforts put in. Due to the bulk promotional emails getting into inbox daily, many including me may not even open most of the mails unless the title rings a bell. If someone responds it would always be genuine inquiry.
Thanks Mahesh for your insights
Hi Gopal,
Nice article in which you have given the minutest details email marketing. Very helpful for small business enterprises considering this option.
But you have not touched upon Cost Benefit Analysis.
It will be very helpful for SME owners to decide if they can effectively use email marketing option.
Also you have mentioned using your database. Did you manage to expand your database? If yes then by what percentage?
Chandra Mohan
Thanks Mohan. As the figures state for small businesses just sending text mail thru the google mail does not cost you money but yes it does take away some time but I feel its worth it.
Dear Sir,
The practice if email marketing from my personal or domain as the case may be i have adopted since at least last 10 to 12 years with the existing database of nearly 10000 email address and have a passion to grow with the help of any resources available to me from any possible manners. My one email cycle takes nearly 2 months. I get good number of positive responses from any corporate who receives my email and that is the time he wants my services which prompt him to revert on either quote or visiting his office with prior appointment. If upon sending one cycle of emails suppose i get responses from a set of 100 corporates, i get response from may be another set of 100 corporates in my next cycle of sending this emails out of my roughly 10000 odd database. By adopting to the point message email marketing one can grow active corporate for the company.
Thanks for your inputs Mr Kamlesh
Hello Gopal,
Very interesting article in today’s times, as most of them refrain from sending emails to reach out to customers ,considering the fact that there are more effective ways of various platforms available.
What is more important is the fact that how fast is the response and how quickly can we convert it to a sale.
Good read though….
Thanks Pradeep Good to know that you found my blog useful
Very useful information. Particularly the tip about customizing the subject line!
Thanks Lavanya to know that you found one of the Tips useful
Very useful information especially for the beginners. It is indeed a cost effective way to reach customers.
Thank you Kurup
Hi SNG,
Your experiences shared on marketing campaign is a result of sheer hard work with resources and is well appreciated.
I would like to share my opinion on marketing trends adapting predictive marketing methodology applying filters like customer profiling, customer segmentation, needs analysis & loyalty analysis based on customer experience from existing database of customers. This could be an inhibitor towards a new engagement model with targeted marketing content for each category using simple smart marketing solutions available integrating with your existing database as captured by SPG, Wyndham, Club Carlson etc. Since the customers have varying needs and comprise of different categories, I am of the opinion that a targeted and customized marketing content will generate more interest and curiosity from customer base to quickly browse through highlights of the content while colour and graphics indeed attracts more attention as per research.
It’s always a pleasure interacting with you. Wishing you great success in your future endeavors.
Yes Mr Sridhar. I agree a targeted approach would yield better results.
Actual data analysis provides lot of inference and leads to improved action. I believe the article provides that. The tangible effectiveness of email marketing may not be encouraging but in reality, world over it is still used very judiciously. It does create a brand image. It’s an inexpensive method to communicate with your target segment and directly connects to the individuals.
Good read.
Thanks Mr Bansal for your encouraging note.
Good to see the data driven approach of assessing your results, Gopal.
Another factor that could impact results is time of dispatch: time of day/ day of the week. One is usually advised to avoid Mondays and Fridays if the product advertised is business related. And again, after 11 am and before 3pm. Would be interested if you have obtained any insights in your experience.