Studying levels of influence before launching your email marketing campaign.
Let’s go back to some old school and traditional form of customer acquisition on the web: email marketing. Many might think that the age of email marketing is over. Email marketing actually is one of the most powerful vectors of conversion generation still in use. It is one of the reasons why newsletter subscription forms have never disappeared from websites. An email marketing campaign can be a great tool for conversion and also a tool to increase client confidence in your products and keep them coming back to you.
Email marketing campaign target.
To maximise an email marketing campaign the first thing to do is to maximise WHO must be contacted in priority and how to personalise the messages sent out. This calls for the indentification of influential people, the prescribers. Those are the main targets as they have different levels of influence on the prospective clients. There are 3 levels of influence.
Level 1 influencers for your email marketing campaign.
These are those influencers who are in immediate interaction with your clients and who have a real impact on their business. They are those who will have an influence on the choice of your products or those of your competitors. They will be the ones inciting the client to chose a brand compared to another as their own work depends on that.
For example, for a small business management tool publisher, accounting experts are level 1 influencers as in at least 1/3 of cases, they are the ones who influence on the software the company will be using.
Level 2 influencers for your email marketing campaign.
This level of influencer is in contact with the your final clients and can influence their choices. This, however, has very little impact on their own activity.
For example, a washing machine manufacturer can counsel a client on the type of washing powder/liquid to use but this will remain at the level of counsel, it doesn’t impact on how this manufacturer will build machines. A specific garment manufacturer for instance will be a level 1 influencer at this point.
Level 3 influencers for your email marketing campaign.
Level 3 influencers have direct or indirect contact with clients but are merely a link in the whole system. The final client’s choice has no impact on their activity.
For an insurance company, for example, a car dealer is a level 3 influencer because the choice of a car insurance has no impact on whether the final client buys the car at this dealer’s or not?
Now you know who your email marketing campaign should target.
As shown here, it is an absolute priority to identify the level one influencers in your field before even thinking of about what you will be putting in your email marketing campaign. This is a necessity. To make things clear: concentrate on level 1 influencers only to maximise your email marketing campaign conversion rate. Do not lose time with the other levels.
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“They are those whose influence will have an influence …”
How can this help bloggers? I do not think I can send an email to the carrot to explain how my last blog post is awesome, and hope to get traffic from it. O.o Could I?
Thanks for pointing the error out Bruno.
Concerning this article, please remember that the site is first of all oriented towards website ROI and not only bloggers. I’m tackling product marketing through email campaigns here. The idea is to build leads to sell whatever product your site is selling.
Going further, one can use the same techniques to market a blog. For example, your level one influencers would be Physics school teachers or political researchers. These are those prescribers who might propose your blog as a useful read to their fellow researchers or students.
You would, through an email marketing campaign identifying the needs of your target and showing how you are proposing a product (in terms of articles) to those, build a firm base of people coming back to your blog and also sending new and interested visitors. As such you’ll have an increasing traffic and a reducing level of bounce rate.
Yes it’s true. I have not informed my former colleagues that I have a Physics website. Would be a good idea to promote the site. I have been relying on physics forums and Google to get traffic. Maybe I need to be more aggressive.
I would not say that you should be more aggressive but you would really gain something by trying to have more impact on a possible targeted readership.