Thread: Marketing 101: Email Campaign

Marketing 101: Email Campaign

Before I decided to write this and share with you what I do to create an email campaign, I thought I would try and research “email marketing”, “Email marketing blogs”, Email marketing help blog”, etc. for some additional information I could share. I am sorry to report everything I found was garbage. It was either the info was too old, trying to sell you something, or trying to sell you something. Did I mention they just wanted to sell you something? Email marketing is not big business, it’s MASSIVE. I personally have family in the lead generation business and they have been extremely successful for years. When I asked them about email lists, they gave me names of 2 companies and a warning: “Emails are the most unreliable information out of any form of lead generation”. Additionally they state that any company that sells email lists will not tell you but figure on 50% of the list to bounce (bad email). Now depending on the price, that may not be a bad thing, but when someone tried to charge me $0.10 USD per email, I laughed and hung up. $0.10 USD doesn’t sound like a lot? Well let’s keep in mind that the average response from email marketing is 1% (I think that’s still industry standard). So if I ordered 50,000 emails, it would cost $5000.00? So if it’s around %50 bounce rate on average it is really costing $0.20/USD each. Yuck. It’s easy to find emails too if you are willing to direct 30 mins-1 hour a day and grabbing them manually.
Some other notes to keep in mind with an email campaign:

1. Your server, what are you allowed for emails? My personal server doesn’t allow more than 40 at a time. My work email I send out 200 at a time, 1500/day and no probs. Keep in mind also, I researched with Yahoo and Gmail- you can send 500 emails a day without a problem. Not 500 separate emails; 500 total. So if you send 10 emails and have 50 email addresses on each one, you are done for the day. (500 x 30 days is 15000/mo –not bad)
2. More bandwidth for emails cost money. Check with your supplier
3. Don’t break the law. While I have not read the anti-spam law in about a year, I am pretty sure as long as you have posted on the email a way to remove themselves from your email list, you are good. IE: at bottom of email post something like, “If you do not wish to receive any emails please response with the word “Remove” in the title or body of the email.”
4. There are sites that you can use to send emails out that are pretty inexpensive and track EVERYTHING, which I like (bounces, ppl open email, click, etc). I’ve listed some info on this at end of this.
5. YOU HAVE to flush/weed/rinse/insert adjective your email list from bounced and remove emails every time you send out emails or sooner or later the wrong person is going to do something about you sending them too many emails.

OK, on to what I do….

THE SETUP

For simple purposes, since I run an employment company/website, we will keep it with that in mind. You have two types of people you want to find: employers and people looking for work. The employer part is easy, it’s the people looking for work that may take a bit more work.


I keep everything on an excel spreadsheet to make things very easy.



On the left is my active list and on the right is my remove list. (I incorporate all my bounced and remove list together. I don’t know if it is the wisest thing to do, but I want to spend as little time as possible)

The formula that I use in column C is:

=IF(COUNTIF(B$1:B$9,A3)>0,"Delete This","keep")

Copy C1 and paste down the column
- sort by column C
the Delete This's should sort to the top or bottom...then delete them, you might delte some column B emails, but thats ok...just make sure you have a clean copy of your opt out list on a different sheet.
just change the formula to fit the ranges on your original...dont forget the $ signs

So it would look something like this:



And of course, then following down column C…



Then simply delete the emails on column 1 that correspond with the “Delete This” (I got tired of putting a black line through them –LOL) This is the EASIEST way to control your email list. Putting things in perspective, my personal list is around 35,000 and my remove/bounce list is around 6000. I have been doing this now for 8 months. Not bad free, right? There are some excel addons that I think would make this quicker but as of yet I have not find a better way of doing it on a free/personal/efficient level.

GATHERING EMAILS

The key in this is NOT grabbing as many emails as you blindly can; it’s grabbing emails that can help you in your quest. I say this with a caveat that sounds like an oxymoron: Grab as many in the field you specialize as possible.

I will use myself as an example:

I staff Therapists.
Therapists are in the medical field.
The medical field is vast.

So, when I search for emails, I don’t grab emails from automotive shops, I grab emails from the medical field. Therefore, when I go to a hospital website, I grab every single email I can find. When I go to a skilled nursing facility or an out-patient facility I grab every single email I can find. Why? Because I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten a phone call or an email and the conversation starts like this: “Someone I work with passed me your email”, -OR- (even better), “Someone that works for me gave me your email.”

That’s priceless and free.

Most people think they should scour Careerbuilder, Monster.com, etc and I disagree. It takes too long and more and more companies that put a posting there have nothing more than a link to apply either through that site or to theres, so it get’s to be a pain. The single best place that I found emails: Craigslist. I LOVE Craigslist, tons of them put there emails, and if they say “do not contact”, but have their email- grab it anyways. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness then to ask for permission.

Other great places to find emails: directories and associations web sites.

Again, me as an example. I did this last week too-very recent. I was searching for”Home Health Agency directory” (I do a ton of work with this type of business). What pops up? :: National Association for Home Care and Hospice ::

Click that site, then click “Agency Locator” I have gone through, 4 states and 75% of them have email address and 30% of them bounce. (So far). Those numbers are not bad for a concentrated effort to find contacts in your field. You would not have the same luck with Careerbuilder or Monster.

EMPLOYEE EMAIL HARVESTING

This is twice as hard to accomplish. The easiest thing I have found to attract individuals, depednding on your field is Twitter. Twitter is your friend. If you are not auto posting your jobs to a twitter account do that NOW. There are many posts already on here in regards to that- it can be done via plugin or certain websites. Same with Linkedin. Start adding friends on both (there is software available that can automate this process a bit). The easiest way to attract them is to get your jobs in front of people.

In closing, this is not an overnight process. You are building something and it takes time. There are ways to grab emails other than buying lists. Software such as email harvesters, etc (I don’t even know if they are legal anymore or work for that matter)

Just to put things in perspective with myself, I email about 1500 daily, M-F. Out of all of that, I have about 30-50 bounce a day and maybe 10 or so remove daily. I get anywhere from 10-100 responses a week. (For me it varies that much).

I posted a couple links below to review. As I have stated in previous posts, any links I have posted, I have absolutely no relationship with and I am not responsible for any wrong doing you may do after reading this. Use this information at your own risk.




Email marketing services:
Which Email Marketing Platform is Right for You? Here Are 3 of the Best

Email Marketing Services - About Email

interesting read I found surfing:
How can I send email to more than 500 people for free. - email | Ask MetaFilter