Sample Email Marketing Ideas or Plans | Part 2

This entry is continued from the my pevious entry on e-mail marketing. Read that one first.

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.

Email Marketing Campaign Solutions

Email Marketing Campaign Solutions: Substitute for Postal Mail?

E-mail was once thought of as a substitute for postal mail and telemarketing. Email marketers believed it would be one of the most effective forms of advertising because marketing messages could be easily directed at meeting specific needs of specific people. Email marketers were also attracted to the fact that the cost of sending an e-mail marketing message ranges from nothing to nearly nothing. Because of these two factors, companies started sending out large numbers of e-mail marketing messages. This lead to what is known as the “spoiling of the commons.” Also known as the “tragedy of the commons,” this term refers to the excessive and damaging use of what effectively amounts to a free resource. Marketing communications expert, Terence Shimp, once said the following when explaining this term:

Email Marketing Campaign Solutions: Spoiling of the Commons

“Common grazing land for cattle represents the classic case of spoiling the commons. Imagine a situation where a large field is available for all farmers in a community to feed their cattle. All is well as long as not too many animals graze the field and the grass can naturally replace itself at a rate faster than it is consumed. But if there are too many cattle grazing the field, the grass can’t recover rapidly enough and in the long term the field may become bare – certainly unable to support the number of cattle grazing it. In short, the commons have been spoiled.”

Email Marketing Campaign Solutions: Annoyance with Email Marketing Messages

Similarly with e-mail advertising (or marketing), too many people have sent email marketing messages and too many of those email marketing messages are spam email marketing messages. This has led to a greater and greater annoyance with email marketing messages that are spam, and with messages that are perceived as such. The key to unspoiling the e-mail advertising (or marketing) commons is by first and foremost receiving recipient’s permission to send them e-mail marketing messages and e-mail advertisements. A second important means of reversing negative feelings towards e-mail marketing messages is to send e-mail marketing messages that will interest people. Few people like to be advertised to, so the key to a successful e-mail marketing campaign is to design it to be as non-invasive as possible. People don’t want to read a three page e-mail marketing message about how they should buy a product. It may work for some people for awhile, but not for many people and not for long.

Email Marketing Campaign Solutions: Provide Valuable Information

For example, if you are company trying to sell dog health products, instead of trying to sell one of the XYZ dog health products by writing an e-mail marketing message that attempts to convince the consumer to make a purchase directly after reading the e-mail marketing message, it would be far better to provide valuable information to the consumer about dog health. This would provide something to the consumer that the consumer wants to know and would encourage a positive brand image of the XYZ brand. No direct mention has to be made about making a purchase. The e-mail marketing message would have the XYZ logo and limited information about the brand, such as the positioning statement.

Email Marketing Campaign Solutions: Sample Email Marketing Ideas

My next post on email marketing has some sample email marketing campaign ideas that could be used with the XYZ dog health company mentioned above.

Hope you enjoyed this article on email marketing campaigns and ideas