By Chris Lee

According to a recent survey of companies by Econsultancy, more than half of organisations are now using a hosted email marketing service, with three-quarters (75 per cent) rating email marketing as providing either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ return on investment. Despite doubts over the future of email, the statistics would suggest that hosted email marketing services are working well.

To gauge more on the subject of email marketing, how to get started and overall best practice, NMK’s Chris Lee caught up with Paul Bates, UK managing director of email marketing services provider, StrongMail.

Why should companies think about an email marketing strategy? What’s the business case?

The main reason is the high return on investment if done properly. A survey out of the US suggests there’s a return of investment of more than $43 for each $1 spent on email and it’s looking to increase. Why is email important? Because it enables companies to target, personalise and drive traffic to websites and extend the reach of their brand, their products and services.

Where does a company start out with email marketing?

The important thing is to understand the objective and work out how you’re going to monetise that channel. You need the data in the first place, it’s all very well having a million names on a database but have you actually got their email address? You’ll be surprised how many companies want to get into email marketing but haven’t actually collated the data from their clients.

There are different things you can do to get hold of email addresses. If you look at a lot of the high street retailers, they will offer incentives online and in-store to get hold of those [email addresses]. There are also some reputable data suppliers who supply proven and well-researched data.

Don’t you run the risk of annoying a lot of potential customers? Won’t your emails get blocked?

Absolutely, and one of the most important things when embarking on an email marketing strategy is the quality of your data, making sure those people you’re sending emails to are opted in and have the ability to unsubscribe from your mailing campaign if they so wish.

It’s part of the job of reputable email service providers to share information with their clients and with Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Hotmail and Gmail.

There must be a number of legal considerations before embarking on an email marketing campaign, what would you say they were?

Where most people get upset is when they receive emails that they’d consider spam and for which they’ve not subscribed for. It’s really important you have an opted-in database for email, but also have a system to capture and record what we call in the trade ‘hard bounces’, where email addresses perhaps don’t exist, or if someone unsubscribes or complains about an email you don’t keep sending emails to that address. This upsets ISPs and there have been cases where people have been taken to court for continual sending of email to people who haven’t opted in or have complained on receipt of emails.

What are your top tips for email marketing best practice?

Make sure your campaigns are opt-in, make sure that there’s relevance – personalise them, don’t send out a ‘once size fits all all’-type email. Look at the frequency, try campaigns at different times to different people and see what works, using that as guidance for your strategy going forward.

How has social media impacted email marketing?

We’ve heard that social media will supersede email and email will die over the next few years. StrongMail doesn’t agree with that, we see social media as an extension of the email channel. People can forward offers to friends via social media, driving back relevant traffic to their website.

To hear the entire interview, listen to the author’s podcast on email marketing.