EBAYERS 2010

Archive for March 4th, 2010

Is Your Email Marketing Working?

This is a question which is on the mind of all business owners who participate in an email marketing campaign for the purposes of promoting their business. In fact questions regarding the effectiveness of any type of marketing endeavor should be asked regularly to ensure the marketing efforts are producing the desired results. Asking these questions on a regular basis and continually evaluating the effectiveness of the email marketing campaign will help to ensure the email marketing campaign is working well and remains effective whenever changes are made to the marketing strategy. This article will highlight why it is so important to evaluate your email marketing strategy often and will also provide a few tips for evaluating your email marketing strategy.

Evaluating your email marketing strategy on a regular basis is very important because failure to do so may result in your efforts being essentially a waste of time. Email marketing may be a cost effective way to advertise your business but there is some time, money and energy involved in planning and executing an email marketing campaign. If the campaign is ineffective and nothing is done to attempt to make the email marketing campaign more effective your business is wasting resources by continuing to invest in this type of marketing strategy when it is not generating profit for your business or even interest in your products or services.

It is important to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy but it is even more important to set goals before you begin the process of evaluating your marketing efforts. This is important because without these goals it can be difficult to determine whether or not the email marketing efforts are effective. For example your goal may be to increase the number of sales you make per month. Evaluating whether or not you are generating more sales each month is a fairly simple process. However, if your goal is to generate more interest in your products you would use website traffic as opposed to sales to evaluate the effectiveness of the email marketing campaign.

Once you have determined how you intend to evaluate you progress you should be able to easily determine the effectiveness of your current email marketing strategy as long as this is the only marketing you are currently doing. This is because if you have more than one marketing strategy in use at once you cannot be sure which strategy is driving customers to make purchases or visit your website. When you decide to evaluate your email marketing strategy according to specific goals you should take care to ensure you are not currently running other types of marketing in conjunction with your email marketing effort. This will help to prevent confusion about which type of marketing is producing the desired effect. It will also help to prevent business owners from mistakenly believing email marketing is producing a desired effect when it is actually another marketing strategy which is helping to product the desired effect.

Customer surveys are very important for evaluating the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign. Asking customers how they heard about your products or services is an excellent way to determine whether or not many of your customers are being enticed to make a purchase based on your email marketing efforts. Additionally, these surveys can be used to obtain more detailed information about the email recipient’s reaction to the email marketing campaign. Customers can provide valuable feedback about topics such as the layout and appearance of the email to the ease of readability of the content included in the email. All of this information can help a business owner determine how to design future emails to achieve a desired effect. Armed with this information the business owner can design subsequent emails which incorporate many of the qualities previous customers found to be useful and avoid qualities which were viewed as useless in the past.

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One of the chief complaints I receive from the attorneys that I meet and work with is that they just don’t have time for legal marketing. While billable hours, day-to-day emergencies and time outside the office all add up, there are definite ways to go about making time for legal marketing and business development. The key is to think of it as an ongoing habit, not something to “make time for.” Rather than seeing marketing and business development as a burden, think of it as an integral part of your day-to-day life. The interesting thing about creating this kind of habit is that once you find the right system for your individual lifestyle it should simply become second nature.

The benefits to making time are numerous. Aside from building relationships with potential clients and referral sources, taking advantage of marketing and business development opportunities can help increase your visibility AND credibility in the legal arena and beyond. Writing articles and participating in social media help you create and build a personal brand—something that every lawyer should have. True dedication and time commitment can even bring you recognition as an expert in your chosen practice area or within a specific industry.

Below are a few suggestions and lessons from attorneys I’ve worked with, as well as my own observations and experience. Choose the path that make sense for you or adapt the suggestions to work within your own day, but give it a chance. Do something! The rewards you will reap are far greater than a 5-minute time commitment.

Multi-task. No one I know comes into the office and immediately gets to work. One solution to the time crunch is to fold your marketing and business development efforts into your morning routine. As you sit down to your desk with your morning coffee or tea (or breakfast…) browse through your contacts or referral lists and send a few emails; read a legal marketing blog; update your social media or even spend 10 minutes working on a potential article or speech. By 9 am you’ll have accomplished something solid and can focus the rest of your day on other endeavors. Alternately, you can do the same thing during a quick lunch at your desk or coffee break. You’d be surprised how far 10 minutes can go.
Save it up. One attorney I know has created a special folder in her email Inbox specifically for legal marketing emails. As the weekly or daily updates from the blogs and social media groups she subscribes to come in she simply directs them to the folder. Then, once a week she takes an hour out of her day to read through the week’s emails and respond to them accordingly. She’s able to keep up to date on legal marketing news and colleague updates, post articles and communicate about possible speaking engagements without disrupting the flow of her day.
End your day. A colleague of mine channels his efforts into work all day but integrates marketing into his nighttime routine. With the stresses of the day (and impending deadlines, phone calls and emails) over, he sets aside 15-20 minutes a night before bed to investigate marketing leads, send emails to potential referral sources and work on articles and social media.
Schedule it in… for the first month. If all else fails, treat legal marketing as a literal client. Put it on your schedule and make no excuses for not paying attention to it, just as you would a client. Whether it’s once a week or biweekly, set aside specific time for uninterrupted focus. After the first month I can guarantee that finding time for business development will feel effortless.

Simple in theory but never easy in practice, without a true commitment you can never reap the rewards of a solid marketing habit. Filling your pipeline with work, receiving recognition as an expert and gaining credibility and visibility won’t happen all at once, but you can be sure they will happen. Just as with any other endeavor, it takes focus and time to see results.

Paula Black has advised law firms around the globe on everything from powerful and innovative design to marketing strategy and business growth. She is an award-winning. Amazon-bestselling author and the force behind In Black & White (inblackandwhiteblog.com), a blog dedicated to clear, straightforward advice and open discussion of legal marketing issues. For more information on Paula Black, her books and her company please visit paulablacklegalmarketing.com.
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