Direct Marketing Strategy: Different Ways To Use Email In Your Campaigns

Direct Marketing Strategy – Using Email in your B2C Marketing and B2B Marketing

When it comes to developing a Direct Marketing Strategy, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective methods to reach your customers. It does not matter if your strategy requires a B2C marketing approach or a B2B marketing approach. Email is a great way to deliver your message directly to prospective customers.

As part of your Direct Marketing Strategy, consider the 3 basic ways to send an email to your subscribers. They are a/r or autoresponder messages, broadcast emails, and blog broadcast messages. Most popular autoresponder services, often referred to as Email Service Providers (ESP), allow you to set up and use all three with your lists. Let’s take a look at each of these email types in turn as well as when and how you may want to use them.

Direct Marketing Strategy: Autoresponder Emails

Let’s start with a/r emails. These are emails to go out to your readers in the order they signed up. It’s a little hard to grasp at first, but it’s a very efficient way to email your list. Often the very first email you send to your subscribers is an autoresponder email. I’m talking about the welcome email your readers receive in their inbox as soon as they sign up. You usually thank them for subscribing in this message and if you offered a freebie for signing up, you deliver it in this email as well.

The autoresponder function allows you to schedule more emails to go out to your readers on a regular basis. The big benefit of using this type of email is that you write them once, get them scheduled and you know that every single person that signs up for your list will see every one of these emails. This is perfect for evergreen content and offers.

At Eagle and with our clients, when developing a Direct Marketing Strategy, we will set up an autoresponder that delivers content based on the source of the email. For example, if someone signs up for a white paper on starting an email marketing program, the autoresponder will be populated with emails on marketing programs and marketing services we offer.

Direct Marketing Strategy: Broadcast Emails

Read the Scarcity Marketing Campaigns Preview

Broadcast emails, on the other hand, are more like the emails you send through your personal account. You send them today and whoever is on your list today will get the email. Someone signing up tomorrow or next week never sees this email. It works very much like your Gmail account. The big difference is that you email hundreds or thousands of people at the same time.

This type of email is great if you send out a weekly or monthly newsletter and any content or offer that’s time sensitive. We spend a lot of time on how to craft time sensitive email campaigns. First in the article, Create Scarcity Email Campaigns in 3 Easy Steps to Increase Sales. Then, in the eBook Scarcity Marketing Campaigns: Your Guide to Building Scarcity Social Media and Email Marketing Campaigns That Convert Customers and Grow Sales. The eBook is available on Amazon here or you can read a free preview here.

Direct Marketing Strategy: Blog Broadcast Emails

The last option is a blog broadcast. This is a pretty cool feature and an easy way to automate some of your email marketing if you’re a blogger. The autoresponder service generates and sends out an email as you blog. You can set it up to send out an email each time you publish a new blog post, or create an email every so often (once a week for example).

Eagle’s Business Hacking Newsletter is sent out once a week, usually on Tuesday. One of the purposes of the newsletter is to highlight our latest blog post. We typically make one post a week.

Ideally, you want to use all three types of emails on a regular basis in your Direct Marketing Strategy. Mix and match them to get your email messages out in an effective way. Having options gives you leverage and it allows you to make the most of every email message you write.

If you are just getting started with Email Marketing, here are some good places to start:

You can also sign up for our Business Hacking Newsletter, which includes great tips and how-to articles on email marketing.