Golden-Key Success Factors for E-Marketing

Here are key success factors for e-marketing that are absolute gold to anyone who wants to market their brand, product, service or company online:

1.Ask nicely:
The consumer's permission to communicate with them counts for everything. A good e-marketing campaign will be very vocal about clear, honest, opt-in propositions. Pitch it to lists of people who've already visited your site, visited your store or mailed in your response card.

2.Grow your list the hard way:
Here's the bottom line: You want more e-mail addresses to hit with your message, while consumers increasingly want their privacy. The web-savvy consumer is realizing that his personal data is valuable to you, so on your website you have to propose a transaction: You have to offer information, value or privileges in return for a little initial consumer input. And for each extra item of data you want from them, you have to offer more. Again and again. You acquire customer knowledge one fact at a time.


3.Lead with your brand:
Go for recognition. If you develop an effective viral vehicle that people willingly circulate on your behalf, you've got it absolutely right. But if not – and it's not easy to do – then you need to play the brand card in your e-mail messages. Use the brand name in the subject line to jog the recipient's memory and remind them that they authorized this communication. On the increasingly forbidding e-landscape, trust and trusted brands are becoming the only acceptable coin of the realm.

4.Serve your customer's agenda:
Make offers that should logically appeal to the target audience. Avoid making offers that differ from their prior interests, or lean on too little history. If you're in the box business and your list is made up of known box buyers, that's easy enough. But for many of us the targeting isn't that simple - it can be far broader than that. Don't rely on 'automated agenda sensors'.


5.Be driven by customer lifetime value:
It's a mistake to think that tricking consumers into dealing with you will build a long-lived business. A misleading offer, or a coercive and confusing website experience, may score a few visits in the short term - perhaps even a few dollars earned - but repeat business is better. The world wide web is good at maintaining and deepening relationships, if it is used correctly. Craft your opening messages and introductory pages as if the whole future of your business depends on their tone - which, in fact, it may do.