E-mail Marketing: Sending Links Instead of Attachments

Introduction

Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses of all types and sizes. No matter how you define success, you can achieve outstanding results with email marketing while investing only a small amount of time and an even smaller amount of money

“54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts.” Source: DMA Interactive

As with most everything you do in business there is a right way and a better way. E-mail Marketing is no different in that regard. Owners and managers of small businesses who are new to e-mail marketing usually understand the cost-effectiveness of using e-mail to promote a product or service. Frequently, however, they lack the technical expertise to fully leverage this powerful marketing tool. Small adjustments in how an e-mail marketing message is delivered can make a big difference in its effectiveness in producing revenue for a business.

 

How to Send Brochures, Reports, and
Other Content Via E-mail Marketing

If your e-mail campaigns typically include attachments such as electronic brochures, reports, or other content then we have some helpful advice for you:

Stop it!

Our clients are routinely warned NOT to send attachments in e-mail marketing messages if they want to deliver the full sales impact of the message. Instead, we insist that they send one or more links to collateral sales materials that have been uploaded to your company’s website. There are two big reasons why we make this an iron-clad policy.

1) “Linked” collateral content gets read more often. Content such as brochures, reports, etc. stands a better chance of being read by the recipient than does attached content. There are a couple of reasons why this is true. First, people are becoming increasingly fearful of opening attachments – from anyone. Second, attachments occasionally get stripped away from the e-mail itself by office antivirus and anti-spyware applications before the e-mail finally arrives in the recipient’s Inbox. Third, attachments tend to clog up the recipient’s e-mail system and consume a lot of e-mail bandwidth. In short, e-mails free of attachments tell the recipient (and potential customer) how considerate you are of his time and computer resources.

2) Links leverage the selling power of your company’s website. The goal of any e-mail marketing campaign should be to move the recipient closer to buying your product or service. Either your marketing message asks the recipient to pick up the phone and call you for more information or it leads him or her to an intermediate step that leads closer to a sale.

If your sales offer is compelling enough in the e-mail – and no more information is needed to make a buying decision — then an intermediate step may not be necessary. But if you want to keep the recipient’s interest for as long as possible – and increase the chance of converting him into a customer – then a link back to a page on your website is a smart way to do this. Once inside your website the recipient can download the desired brochure or report and also be exposed to more information about your company and your products.

Finally, once the e-mail recipient enters your website you have the opportunity to easily capture valuable information about your new visitor (name, e-mail address, company, etc.). This information can be requested just before the visitor begins downloading the desired report or brochure. Even if the visitor cannot be converted right away into a customer you will still have collected valuable information that can be used in future e-mails or other marketing communications.

Conclusion

Effective E-mail Marketing becomes a “salesforce multiplier” when combined with other online marketing strategies including “Linked Collateral Content” and a companion business website. When strategies such as these are combined the chances for ultimately converting a prospect to a customer increase dramatically.

 

For more information about Online Marketing Strategies for Retail Stores (OMS/RS) services offered by MELCOOPER Consulting please call us today at 1-866-695-8669 or visit our website at http://melcooper.com .