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The art of email: Building a smart, timely campaign to hook more customers

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Remember when all you did was put a stamp on an envelope and mail it? Try sharing that memory with an eye-rolling, young hotshot who claims to know everything about email – and likes to remind you of that. But smarty pants doesn’t know you have a few tricks up your sleeve.

(First, resist the urge to put that whippersnapper in his or her place.)

Then you can show off what you know — starting with this rule: There pretty much are no rules.

It all depends on the nature of your business, your customer base and target audience, what information you’re trying to get across, the result you expect — and how you’re measuring it.

The best advice?

Look at your own email track record in terms of day of the week, time of day, open rates and overall success. What worked for you before? What didn’t? Are there instances you would have done it differently if you had another opportunity?

Next, your best strategy might be to focus a little more closely on buyers and buyers-in-waiting. After all, the goal of most email campaigns is to move people from one stage of the buying cycle a little further down the road. What does someone in that position need to know? What information will they not care about?

By tracking the stages of the buying cycle, you can adjust your email message and frequency. If a customer is moving into the final stages before purchase, remind them why it’s such a great idea to do business with you.

There are reliable sources out there that measure the results of email campaigns. But they can’t tell you what’s going to work best with your company and customers.

For example, NetProspex tracked more than four million emails last year for marketers, sales pros and businesses.

Once again, no promise of an exact battle plan for any situation — but solid advice nonetheless:

  • Stay away from the heat. July is the worst month for open and response rates, especially the first week of the month and any Friday.
  • Stick to the middle. That’s the middle of the week — Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — in the middle of each month.
  • Steer clear of winter holidays. The 3 to 4 days before Thanksgiving and before Christmas had awful open rates.

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