Email Marketing Update

A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you my experience with email marketing.

Click here to read those lessons learned for Email and Websites.

This time I have another inside look at an email campaign that I designed for the Advertising Federation of Fort Wayne, of which I serve as the Vice-President of Communications.

September 18th is our next monthly meeting and the purpose of this email campaign is to get RSVP's by next Monday, so we can have an accurate count for lunch, etc....

Today I sent an email to a list of 300 and the picture you see is the response after 3 hours. (Click on the picture to make it bigger.)

Actually the response is not much different than it was after 90 minutes.

Here's the numbers:

300 sent, 3 bounced. (I worked hard at having a clean list.)

120 were opened in the first 90 minutes, out of that number, 20 clicked through to the website and registered.

The email was sent at 10am local time, one of the best times to send an email to local business people.

We now have nearly 50% of the list viewing the email.

Now what else did I do to enhance this campaign?

On August 21st, about 50 people that attended that month's meeting recieved a small Save The Date card at the meeting.

Also on August 21st, the website was updated to people could register online from the home page.

A few days later, the Save The Date postcard was sent as a direct mail piece.

All of this I call "seeding".

Yesterday we sent out the official direct mail invite, a big post card, it should arrive today and tomorrow.

Also yesterday, I updated the front page of the website with the same artwork and design as the direct mail piece and the email blast.

I will be sending one more email blast Monday morning.

Here's the lessons to learn:

Multiple messages to the same person will increase the response rate. If someone attended our August meeting, they would have received a Save The Date card, followed by a Save The Date direct mail piece, and two emails, plus a visit to the website adds up to 5 opportunities to invite them to this months meeting.