Golden Leads

I believe in email. I believe that it drives awareness and sales revenues. I know that it works, but in our consumer driven economy can we always expect everyone to want to hurry to buy from us? It is timing and segmentation. Not everyone is ready to buy anytime you have a sale no matter how fantastic or amazing the deals and creative may be. Reality check time guys.

When you are planning a campaign driven by a sale you must take the following actions:

1. Segment your list so that you target buyers that based on past data will be targets to your offers. Don’t drop the offer to everyone if you don’t have the data to back up if they will buy.

2. Think micro campaigns in leading up to the sale. Sales are driven by not one, but a series of emails building awareness, segmenting by those that have already acted on your offer, sending additional (note your frequency) reminders of the offer and time remaining to participate, and closing the loop with a stake in the ground when it is over and done.

3. Know the audience intimately. If you are selling woman’s clothing, don’t send the men on your list the offer (JCrew listen up). If you are selling to a business, don’t send your customers the offer because you are too lazy or unable to segment. The last thing you want to do it create buyers remorse on an offer that someone has already acted on.

4. Have the inventory to support a sale. So many times I have clicked through in 5 seconds from getting an email and the products are already gone that would be of interest to me. Builds a future thought in my mind to not pay attention to future ones.

In the end you can drive the business if you are clear about your goals and expectations while truly building a campaign that works.

Thanks to The Email Wars for this great article.