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Friday, June 09 2017

6 Steps To Developing An E-mail
Marketing Strategy For Your Payroll Service

By Glenn Fallavollita, President – Drip Marketing, Inc.

  • Word Count: 1,007
  • Approximate Time To Read Article: 4.0 minutes @ 250 words per minute

Do you want more sales leads from your email marketing efforts? If you do, you will find the following six steps of particular value.

  • Step One: Segment Your Databases - Before you start designing, writing, and sending a series of e-mail marketing campaigns, you need to segment your target audience the same way you go to market; therefore, we recommend creating databases that fall into these general categories:

  • Clients - Payroll
  • Clients - HCM
  • Prospects - Association members
  • Prospects - Chamber members
  • Prospects - General
  • Referral partners - Accountants
  • Referral partners - Benefit brokers

After segmenting your lists by target audience, it will be a lot easier to develop content that is relevant to each database you have on file.

  • Step Two: Clean Up Your “Prospect And Referral Partner” Databases – After segmenting your databases, it is important to remove the e-mail addresses that will cause your account to be blacklisted/flagged when using services like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, etc.  THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO YOUR CLIENT DATABASE. 

    Remove the e-mail addresses* that end in:

  • Aim.com
  • Aol.com
  • Att.com
  • Gmail.com
  • Hotmail.com
  • Mail.com
  • microsoft.com
  • msn.com
  • netzero.com
  • optonline.com
  • roadrunner.com
  • Yahoo.com
  • att.net
  • bellsouth.net
  • Comcast.net
  • Cox.net
  • optonline.net
  • prodigy.net
  • SBCglobal.net
  • verizon.net

Remove the “ROLE” e-mail addresses that begin with:

  • Contact@
  • Donot@
  • Help@
  • Info@
  • Mail@
  • Manager@
  • Office@
  • President@
  • Sales@
  • Service@
  • Spam@
  • Support@
  • Webmaster@

* If you are buying a database of e-mail addresses, it is critical to go through this process.

  • Step Three: Determine Your Content And Low-Risk Offer - Now that you know your target audience, it is time to think about what you are going to say. As I tell all our clients, “Content is king.” That being said, it can be helpful to outline the message you want to include in each e-mail campaign. Later, as you are putting together your strategy, your outline will be a nice reference to ensure you are staying on target – remember, don’t forget to add a low-risk offer.  ​
  • Step Four: Determine Your Company’s Sending Frequency And Goals - Not all sending frequencies are created equal as you can e-mail your database of payroll clients a lot more frequently than a prospect or referral partner.  Ultimately, you have to decide on what works best for your target audience. From my end, I always recommend sending at least three e-mails a month to help gain maximum visibility with your databases on file.  Remember, content is king and don’t be too self-serving when writing a campaign. Additionally, be careful to plan for peak buying times, i.e., year-end, upcoming holidays, webinars or events you are hosting, and the like. ​​IMPORTANT: Don’t think for one second that blasting a generic e-newsletter once or twice a month is doing anything for your lead nurturing efforts. And if someone is telling something otherwise, they are doing your business a huge disservice.​​​
    ​​
  • Step Five: Develop An E-mail Marketing Calendar – To ensure your campaigns are being sent on a regular schedule, create an e-mail marketing calendar.  Not only will this help you and your team stay on target, but it will help you avoid any last minute campaigns – which tend to be filled with grammar and spelling errors, poor links and less than engaging subject lines.  Your e-mail marketing calendar should include the following column headings:
    • Target Send Date
    • Project Manager
    • e-Mail Topic
    • Target Audience
    • Subject Line/From Field
    • Objective/Goals
    • Does This Require Follow-Up By Sales Team
  • Step Six: Determine If A Salesperson’s Follow-Up Call Is Needed – To maximize the sales leads generated from your e-mail marketing campaigns, it is imperative to determine if a follow-up phone call is necessary.  If it is, take the following steps:

    • Create an e-mail campaign that includes a low-risk offer. 
    • Advise your sales team they will be taking part in a phone blitz session to help follow-up this campaign (give them 2 weeks notice). 
    • Create two follow-up scripts; one for talking with a live person and one for leaving a voicemail.
    • Send your campaign at approximately 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
    • After sending the campaign, wait 2.5 hours and download a list of people who opened the e-mail.  Sort the list by salesperson assigned to the account, and then by e-mail addresses – then give each salesperson a list to call. 
    • After you and/or your salespeople leave a voicemail, make sure they send an e-mail to follow-up their voicemail message (see below).

First Name: I just called and left you a message as I wanted to follow-up on an e-mail we sent to you about 8:30 a.m. today (the one for the ________ offer).  

If you want to learn how we can (reduce or increase your ___________) I have a few ideas that will help your business – just return my call or send me off a quick e-mail on the best time(s) for us to talk.

Look forward to talking soon!

Name
Company Name
Phone
e-mail Address

P.S. If you want to read what some of our clients are saying about our ____________, I have attached a few success stories for you.

Posted by: Glenn Fallavollita AT 05:31 am   |  Permalink   |  Email