SMEs turn to email marketing in tough times

Hong Kong - Landscope, a luxury property consulting business has turned to web design agency Beansbox for the implementation of a new electronic direct mail (EDM) system including the revamp of its website.

Belle Liu (pictured), founder for Beansbox Studio observed while many businesses are delaying major revamp projects or cutting down budget on maintaining online presence as a result of the downturn, there has been a significant surge of email marketing efforts.

She said compared with other marketing vehicles, email marketing is often considered to be inexpensive, easy and effective.

Businesses with a small contact list of less than a thousand recipients can easily launch a DIY campaign with affordable, marketer-friendly "hosted" systems like Campaign Monitor or Constant Contact, which costs as little as US$0.01 per recipient and not worry about software license, hardware or deliverability. 

Large corporations with hundreds of thousands of recipients and requires data privacy or sophisticated integration would opt for "enterprise-level" proprietary solutions to carry out large scale, frequent campaigns that usually involve the IT department.

The initial setup and license could cost as much as US$40,000 which is prohibitive for the majority or even some large corporations on a budget.

Liu caters to those "trapped in between" that have a medium-sized contact list, a higher send volume and reasonable needs for certain features that are only available in enterprise solutions.

These companies want to keep the contact lists in-house, link it up with internal databases or even modify the system to suit a particular need but their budgets are nowhere near those of those enterprise solutions. 

Liu pointed out some misconceptions marketers have when running their EDMs. For instance, emails without an unsubscription link or those with only a single image or an attachment but no text in the body or some being sent multiple times to the same recipient.

She said many emails are not well-tested and well-formatted for various email clients thus making the campaigns largely ineffective.

Despite the strengthening of legislation in Hong Kong, Liu said there is still a lack of general knowledge by SMEs on obtaining "permission".

Some are unaware that sending emails to addresses collected from the web, the press or third party databases are against the rules while others are reluctant to use a "double opt-in" system in fear of losing recipients. 

"Unless and until they are well-educated and follow the best practices diligently, investing in hardware and software in email marketing may be just another channel for wasting marketing dollars," she added.

Liu shares five key tips to a successful EDM campaign:

•  You must get permission. Spam hurts your brand and customers.
•  Always follow design guidelines and test vigorously.
• Get your copy professionally written and make sure it is well-formatted and displayed in major email clients.
• Make it easy for people to unsubscribe. Never, ever again send them any more EDM.
• Measure the results and keep improving your design and content.