Email Marketing Idea: XYZ K9 Health Meter E-newsletter
My suggestion would be to have a monthly e-mail newsletter with various dog health tips, tricks and news updates. This e-mail would be called the K9 Health Meter and would be for current customers. If there is a low percentage of people who are opening your current e-mail campaign messages, then there is some has probably been some “spoiling of the commons.” To curtail increased aversion, a prudent decision would be to first send out the newsletter in print format, and then make the transition to an e-mail format once there has been adequate time for an adoption process to take place. Just a sample of what you could do with email marketing.
Email Marketing Idea: XYZ K9 Health Meter – Breeders Edition
The second form of e-mail advertising that could be implemented is similar to the K9 Health Meter for current customers and will have similar content to it, but the information will be modified to target breeders. The breeder’s e-mail addresses could be gathered from InfoDog.com’s National Breeders Directory. A rough estimate of the numbers of e-mail addresses within this directory is between 5,000 and 10,000. This presents a huge potential in terms of sales volumes. Breeders are more likely to invest in high quality dog food and are more educated on dog health. Also, they usually have more dogs than most consumers, which, of course, could lead to even greater sales volumes.
Just a sample email marketing idea that could be used. What you do depends on what your company does, but there are concepts that can be drawn from these ideas that will help your email marketing campaign.
Care has to be taken when sending the e-mails because the breeders haven’t chosen to get the e-mail updates and it is possible that they aren’t aware of the XYZ brand name. Therefore, it will be essential to keep any sales solicitations to a minimum or to nothing and to keep messages as non-invasive as possible. The logo, positioning statement, and contact information will be in a banner at the top. After some adoption has taken place, then products can be features in a column on the left side of the e-mail. Adoption would be measured by analysis data indicating an increase in readership. The website and blog URL will be featured with “More information and articles.”
Topics would include breeding health information and topics that relate to your products. An example of a topic would be one discussing why a specific ingredient is beneficial to a canine’s health. Another example topic would be one discussing why typical dog food choices are harmful, such as “Rice Kills Dogs.”
Email Marketing Ideas: Happy Dog Photo Contest
My next plan for the use of e-mail marketing would be to have a dog photo contest called the “Happy Dog Photo Contest.” An e-mail will be sent out to current customers announcing this contest and would encourage consumers to reply to the e-mail with a photo of their dog looking “happy.” The winner of the contest will receive a prize consisting of several of the XYZ products, a dog cancer treatment book, and $500. The photos that are sent in will be posted on the XYZ website and each photo will have a feature that allows people to vote for each one. Besides the announcement e-mail, the contest will also be promoted with banner ads on websites such as www.ihasahotdog.com/. This is discussed in further detail under the banner ads section of the IMC plan.
By using the concept of a dog’s happiness with the XYZ brand name, their will be an association created between the two. Once this association has taken place, the idea that XYZ products promote their pet’s happiness will become part of the XYZ brand image (the particular thoughts or feelings that a consumer has about a brand). This is an example of marketers call the brand image creative style. Advertising and promotions that use this type of style attempt to develop an image or identity for a brand by drawing meaning from various concepts, ideas, or symbols and then transferring those meanings to the brand’s image. The concept of happiness was chosen because, generally speaking, a happy dog would be considered a healthy dog.
Once there has been enough time to receive e-mails (2-3 weeks) with photos attached, the photos will be sorted and the best 20-50 (depending on your website resources, the number could include all the photos sent in) will be posted on the website. Another e-mail will be sent out telling your customers that voting has opened. They will also be encouraged to send a link of their dog photo to their friends, so that they can help vote for their photo. When the friends vote, they will be exposed to the XYZ brand and products. This will encourage word-of-mouth communication, which is by far the most effective form of marketing.
On the website pages that contain the contest photos, there will be product listed in a column along the side of each page. There will also be messages between the photos, such as “XYZ– We care about your pet’s happiness and health”
These are just sample email marketing ideas. Come up with ideas on your own that will serve your company's needs. Remember to apply the various concepts cover in this article on email marketing ideas and my article about email marketing.