Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
At Constant Contact it always starts and finishes with our customers, without whom I would have very little to write about. To all of those customers who have shared with me and my colleagues at Constant Contact their knowledge and experiences, I extend my most grateful thanks.
A special thank you to John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Senior Editor Richard Narramore, who quickly caught onto Constant Contacts passion to educate small businesses and organizations on the power of email marketing and supported us endlessly in our pursuit to bring this book to market. Thanks to the other members of our team at Wiley: Ann Kenny and Kate Lindsay. They helped me navigate the steps as a first-time author.
To Matt Wagner of Fresh Books Literary Agency for guiding us through this great opportunity and working tirelessly to bring this book to fruition.
To the people of Constant Contact, who strive every day to revolutionize the success formula for small businesses and organizations, a piece of what I have learned from all of you is embedded within every page of this book. To Gail Goodman, Bob Nault, Tom Howd, Ellen Brezniak, Bob Nicoson, John Walsh, Steve Wasserman, Dan Richards, and Nancie Freitas, thanks for your leadership. And to the entire Constant Contact Global Market Development Team, a special thanks for the inspiration you provide me on a daily basis.
A special word of thanks to John Arnold for coaching me through the process, expanding my words, assembling the pieces, and driving this project to completion.
Thanks also to Constant Contacts partners, including SCORE, SBDCs, and Chambers of Commerce, that support us in our mission to educate every small business or organization that wants to understand the Power of Relationships.
And last, to my wife Tracy and my children Madeline and Mitchell for all of their support and encouragement as I toiled away in the office writing this book.
The 40 Know It or Blow It Rules of Email Marketing
Email marketing is an amazingly cost-effective way to build relationships that drive business success. In todays challenging economic times, this cost advantage makes email marketing arguably the most powerful tool for building any business.
But the main advantage of email marketing is not cost. Email is simply the most effective way to stay in touch with most of your customers. If youre like many businesses, the 2009 recession forced you to hunker down and focus on driving business and sales from those most likely to buypeople you already have a relationship withand thats what email marketing is all about.
Email marketing is powerful, but its also a challenge because the inbox is a hostile environment. Whether your email is noteworthy or not-worthy depends on your ability to stick to the fundamentals of authentic relationship building with your customers. Thats what this book is abouthow to use email to build long-lasting customer relationships.
Over the years, we at Constant Contact have made it our mission to collect, create, refine, and share email marketing best practices with our customers. Were proud to now share these with you in this bookstrategies that have contributed to the success of hundreds of thousands of businesses around the globe. On a daily basis we interact with thousands of business owners and non-profits just like you on the phone, online via webinars, and in person at live seminars held throughout the United States. These interactions provide us with regular feedback and fascinating lessons on the rapidly evolving world of email marketing.
Here are some examples of small businesses and non-profits who have discovered a broad range of benefits of email marketing:
We track all of our participants and have found that more than 53% of them found out about us through the Internet or our email newsletter. Email marketing is only a fraction of the cost of print ads and it brings in a phenomenal ROI.
Girls Learn to Ride
I cant believe the number of people who walk into our restaurants and redeem coupons. Before I tried email marketing, I would put a coupon in the local newspaperbut fewer than 10 people would redeem it. I then put the same coupon in an email and sent it to 400 people. I saw 100 email coupons redeemed that month!
Fajita Grill
For our 35th anniversary, we sent a save the date email to 3,000 people. At 42 cents a stamp, that would be over $1,000 worth of postage weve saved from just one mailing.
Women Employed
Most of all, email marketing has helped us stay connected, build community, and inspire people.
Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta
Our revenue from return customers has increased about 30% since we began sending out our New Arrivals email campaign. Weve found that a number of customers who have never purchased from us before will buy after we send out an email campaign.
Bijoux Mart International
I know the email strategies in this book work because I have personally taught them to thousands of small business owners and watched the results. Constant Contacts success is directly attributable to the fact that we have helped so many of them grow their organizations. In addition, I used these same email strategies to help build Constant Contact from an unknown technology startup into an industry-leading public company. When I arrived in 2001, we had 10 customers and roughly $100 a month in revenue. Now, we are the largest provider of email marketing services for small- to medium-sized businesses, with 300,000 customers in 120 countries and 500+ employees. I hope youll find a path to greater business success in the pages that follow.
Since this book is for busy leaders who dont have a lot of time, Ive decided to use Chapter 1 to summarize all the email marketing success fundamentals contained in this book, so you can quickly decide which of your own email practices need immediate attention.
The rest of the book will help you build a comprehensive email marketing strategy for your business.
Ten Keys to Your Overall Email Marketing Success
If you learn nothing else from this book, I recommend you master the following ten principles. Most of the statistics that suggest high returns on email marketing investment depend on how closely you adhere to these basics.
1. Only send email to people who know you. People open email from people they know, and they delete email from people they dont recognize or mark it as spam. It doesnt even matter whats legal or ethical. If your business makes a habit of emailing total strangers, then your reputation, your budget, and your growth will suffer for it. You can read about building a good email list in Chapter 5.
2. Dont treat email addresses like email addresses; treat them like relationships. An email address is one of the most personal things someone can share with your business because its an invitation to send your messages to a place where he or she sends and receives personal communications as well as business ones. Email doesnt work if it feels like a computer-generated HTML document. It has to come across as being part of a meaningful relationship. You can read about building relationships in Chapter 2.