Situation
One of my clients serving pharmaceutical companies relies on email campaigns to communicate with clients. However, the company did not measure the performance of three potentially lucrative email campaigns.
Approach
To understand the client’s process, I analyzed the three campaigns and considered:
- Who received each email?
- What is the call to action?
- Did the copy explain the benefit of completing the call to action?
- Did the client provide sufficient time to complete the call to action?
- How did the client keep track of each recipient’s status?
Recommendations
My analysis yielded problems, which I addressed with these suggestions:
- Respectful reach: There’s a fine line between tenacious repetition and irritating spam. Since several recipients received more than 6 emails per month, I recommended combining messages to streamline communications.
- Keep it simple: Originally, one of the three campaigns contained a whopping 7 calls to action. Now there is only one call to action per email, simplifying readers’ lives and improving visibility into the status of each email recipient.
- Share what’s in it for them: The campaigns now stress the benefits to the recipient of performing the call to action. The messaging is placed up front rather than buried at the end.
- Create a sense of urgency: The original campaign did not contain a deadline. To impel readers to act quickly, the client now provides a 5-week timeline to complete the call to action.
- Track recipients: Originally, the client did not measure the marketing impact of the email campaigns. Now the client assigns account managers to track recipients’ status, provide specific help and proactively follow up to prompt action.
Results
After implementing these best practices, the client’s engagement vastly improved. Email response rates increased by 67%, a team effort that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings and sales.
How do you measure your marketing impact?
Lisa Goller helps businesses tell their story. As a Toronto-based Strategic Freelance Writer & Editor, she helps executives and entrepreneurs stand out, look good and save time. Learn more at lisagoller.com
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