The exponential growth of email marketing over the years has been so intense that unwanted emails became a nuisance leading to the governmental CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and the technology industry’s aggressive Spam blockers. Society has gotten to the point of trying to keep out unwanted emails so much that some SPAM blockers keep out email that consumers do want. So with all of these rules and regulations, how is any financial institution supposed to gain customers? The answer is viral marketing. Utilizing existing customers to help expand market awareness and strengthen market presence will enhance any brand both inexpensively and effectively if done correctly.
The best example of a very effective direct email campaign and viral marketing is not from a financial institution, but from a politician. Despite having a different agenda, there are fundamental lessons that can be learned from this campaign and applied to other industries. Barrack Obama, the senator from Illinois and candidate for the next president of the United States would not have been as successful in fundraising was it not for his email marketing. His team of crackerjack campaigners began a monumental grassroots movement all through the power of the Internet. They utilized email marketing as an inexpensive way to send messages and updates to a few people who were interested in the candidate since the beginning when he competed head-to-head with established politicians, like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Beginning with just an informative email to either rebut something that was stated incorrectly or provide his point of view new congressional initiatives, Obama’s campaign spread like wildfire as recipients began to forward emails onto friends and drive them to the website. The lesson here is not how to fight for the presidency, but rather that providing information that excites recipients, will start the forwarding chain from one to another.
The emails were also effective because they were brief, current and frequent without being overbearing, which is a difficult balance to obtain. There’s a famous quote by Mark Twain that stated, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead.” It is easy for someone who is knowledgeable of a subject to write an email as if it was their PhD dissertation. By keeping customers up to date on new and exciting information, but in a brief and easy-to-read manner, it keeps them from instantly hitting the delete button and can even inspire people to forward on the email to those that they feel would benefit from the information contained. Then, once the recipients of a forwarded email sees that whatever was forwarded is valuable to them, they will then want to be one of the first to know and will sign up for the email themselves and forward tantalizing information on to their address book. Then the cycle continues.
The Obama campaign has managed to keep people interested by emailing on a regular basis, but not so frequently that people stop reading them. But what really drives people to want to open and read the email is that they offer their recipients a chance to hear news before the newsrooms have even gotten word. Being one of the first to know is very exciting and keeps people opening their email to see what the next best thing will be. This makes the recipient feel like they are special. The key to an effective email marketing campaign is to not only deliver information that will help the company, but to deliver information that will make the recipient want to open it and not only act, but feel valued that they are receiving this information and then to feel that impulse to pass it on to friends.
But how can a financial institution get started? Here are some tips on how to begin an effective email marketing campaign:
1. Create a quality list. Anyone can buy a list, but consumers are so inundated with emails that something that they are unfamiliar with will most like be ignored, deleted, or caught in the junk mail filter. Because these lists charge by the thousand, it’s better to take advantage of the list of current customers.
2. Target customers’ interests. Make sure to segregate data and target the message to the specific group. Someone who is retirement age won’t need an email offering a great rate on consolidating their student loans. It’s important to really use all the data that a company has, because the more tailored and applicable the email, the higher the response rate.
3. Design matters. Text only emails won’t work. Amidst the sea of text based work and personal emails, customers, or potential customers will want something visually stimulating that gets the point across without having to make them think.
4. Hold their interest. Many companies will make the mistake of writing for themselves or the web. If an email only has three seconds to hold the readers’ interest before its deleted, it’s important to put the most interesting content or selling point first. For those that utilize preview panels, they will only see the header and subheading, so it’s important to make it some they will want to open.
5. Track it. The only way to find out whether or not an email is successful is to track it. Tracking can utilize not just the response rate, but serve as market research. Many companies will send out two emails one with a different headline or layout and each with a unique URL to see which one receives a better response from customers. This will help to sculpt an ideal message that will get the highest response rate.
6. Test it. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to create something for their culture or technology. Emails will appear differently based on the user’s settings and software, so it’s important to test the message on several different machines in different email programs to make sure that the look is clean and concise. Many companies will toil over whether or not to create an email that is leading edge technology, because they feel that they risk alienating some customers that continue to use a platform from a decade ago. The choice should always be to support the platform that the majority of customers are using. This information may be tracked easily through any web analytics program.
7. Pass it on. The best way to build the distribution lists is to have something that people can and will want to forward. If current customers are offered an incentive, such as, money back when a friend signs up for an account, than they are more willing to participate and forward the information to friends. These marketing campaigns are also a great way to enhance the company’s image because the current customer will want to say good things about the company to entice their friends to sign up and positive word of mouth is priceless.
8. Survey says. It’s important to survey the audience once a year to make sure that they are still interested in receiving the emails. This helps to scrub the lists, which will help to keep costs down. Additionally, if there is a significant percentage of unresponsive emails, that may be an indication that the message needs to be tweaked to make the content more interesting.
Viral marketing is the strongest “free” marketing out there. There’s no better compliment than to have a customer pass on the message about a company to a friend. If done correctly, it can be the best initiative that anyone has ever taken without the expense of direct mailing, but if it does not grab the reader or is too frequent, it can have a negative effect on the customer. Keeping things fresh and giving the recipient a reason to forward the email will grow any company’s market presence.
