Scenario - Email marketing campaigns through bxp

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1 Overview

Trying to perform marketing using as few people as possible with highest returns possible is a goal for numerous businesses. bxp is a toolkit which can provide numerous capabilities to deliver the program but requires some planning to make the most use of the tools available.


All n One are not a marketing company but we have worked with marketing companies before. We provide tools that in the hands of marketers can yield significant business results.


2 Planning

It is important to know how others plan their email marketing approaches.



From a number of sources it can be broken down into simple questions which must be answered up front.


2.1 Project details

  • Goal - What do you hope to accomplish with this email? Ex: Lead generation, clickthroughs, event sign-ups.
  • Budget - How much is available to be spent. Costs will invariably accrue in terms of time in hours by people, external designers (if needed) and other hours of assistance from other suppliers.
  • ROI Target - What do you hope to achieve from this project.
  • Owner - Who on your team is crafting this email?
  • Email Send Date - When does this email need to land in your prospects' inboxes? In the template, Column A contains the week of the month (Week 1 - Week 4), and each week contains 3 rows to help you plan 3 email sends per week. If your company sends more than 3 emails per week, you can insert additional rows as needed.
  • Email Topic - What your email is about. Ex: New Ebook or Monthly Email Newsletter.


2.2 Recipients

  • Audience | Target Segment / Persona - Who did you create this email for? Ex: Corporate Executives in mid-sized to large companies.
  • Recipients | Send List - Name of your email list, such as "Corporate Executives Interested in Social Media Topics."
  • Suppression List(s) - Names of lists you want to exclude from your send. Ex: Unengaged Leads and/or Corporate Executives from SMBs.


2.3 Email itself

  • Subject Line - Which subject line are you going to use to entice recipients to open your email?
  • Webpage - If not readable in the email browser
    • Email Draft Link - Copy and paste the link to your email draft here from your email software for you to keep track of or your team to review.
  • Body - The design look, feel and content
    • Personalization Tokens - Which elements of your email are you going to personalize for the recipient? Ex: Name, Company Name.
    • Link to Image File - Paste the link to any image file you need to use.
    • Link to Landing Page(s) or Other Assets - Which webpage(s) are you trying to drive the recipient to?
    • Mailto Link - If you're encouraging email forwarding, then create and paste your Mailto link in the template.
    • Social Share Links or Buttons - If you want email recipients to tweet or share an element of your email, create and keep track of the social sharing links (ex: using ClickToTweet).


3 Explanation - Project Details

Making sure you understand why you're doing the campaign is the primary goal. With that it costs money to do work, so factoring in people's time and support costs, as well as tool or design costs allows for a sensible Return on Investment (ROI) number to be calculated. If I spend X money, I get Y results. Your first campaign will always cost more as you learn the ropes. Sometimes it can be too costly and other times it can be an enormous success. This is the challenge of marketing. Tweaking your campaign to get best results for the investment. Without measurements you won't be able to tell if it is a success or not.


Ensuring there are clear lines of responsibility is vital. As that ensures someone is responsible for delivering the project.


Picking a time and subject will have a massive influence on the acceptance of the email. If you send out on busy Monday mornings people have lots to do and may never read your email just bin it. Instead maybe Thursday afternoon or Friday are better targets to increase readership depending on the topic and subject of the email.


4 Explanation - Recipients

It is equally important to consider your audience. Laziness often creeps into email marketing campaigns. Ah, we'll just bang it out and see what happens. Please remember that every email should be considered as personal as sending a letter to someone. Bad letters are just as damaging to reputation as bad emails. Ensure your lists are clean. Ensure that the message is appropriate for the recipients. Always try to consider the message from the recipients position. Step through the message and its call to action as if you'd never seen the message before. Do you make assumptions or "have to know how to" do something for it to work?


Including people is one thing, but you must also remove people if not appropriate. People who do not want to be contacted. People who may be competitor companies. It is important to clean lists before communication no matter how daunting the challenge may seem.


5 Explanation - Email itself

The final challenge is the email itself. The email need to be built in an email browser friendly way. Not all email browsers work the same. Some will completely destroy the look and feel of your email if you don't technically design them properly.


Have a look at this example from EmailOnAcid.com showing how the email can look different on 44 different types of email client https://www.emailonacid.com/sample/email-test


Other commentaries on the area


Within the body of the email itself are technical components.

  1. Are there links to products or offers or next actions?
  2. Do you want to contact interested parties?
  3. If the email can't be viewed in the email client a link to mirroring website page will be required
  4. If images are to be used where are those images hosted as they shouldn't be attachments to the email


There are so many technical questions as to what could come up, that it is often more prudent to let technical professionals review your email and work their magic to provide you all you require. You will need a message and a design first. Once that is done, give it to the techs and let them work their magic. You may not visually see much difference but your mail will look more consistent across multiple browsers and functionality will work consistently.


However if you want to explore what needs doing....


A large area of consideration is delivery rates. How can you try to ensure that your email doesn't get caught by spam filters, or other programs which would stop your email getting to your recipient. Email_-_Improving_Delivery_Rates


The format of the email is important Writing_HTML_Emails. Part of this is understanding images Images_and_Printing


If you want dynamic content in the emails based on the recipient this is also possible. The_--_field_notation_for_bxp_Forms Campaign_Replacement_Fields


It can be useful to track who is reading the emails, but more importantly you want to track people who actioned the emails. e.g. clicked a link in the email. Communications_-_Email_Clickthru


Attachments to emails are always a bad idea, according to everyone. Here's alternatives Sending_attachments_in_Emails


6 Loading the list

Once you have the email, managing the sending is actually very simple indeed. We start with a list of people to contact probably in Excel. Form_-_Create_from_Excel


You can top up the list / update with opt outs using SMART updates. Form_-_Data_Import#Smart_Update Matching records are updated and new records are appended.


7 Test email send

Using the Communications Centre module you can do test sending. The process for mass sending is detailed here Mass_Email_Sending


What is more effective is to create a group with just you as the test group and check your results Group_Form_Sending


8 Operational Management

Practising an end to end process is useful. What if the customer calls in? What process happens to customers who click the links in the email? Configuring bxp for your inbound operation is a form process set-up. Each recipient in the mailing list is effectively a record in a CRM. Configuring bxp to be treated as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) makes inbound and outbound calling blended contact combined with email communications a very slick solution. Scenario_-_bxp_for_Outbound_Campaign_management


9 Calculating ROI

ROI calculation is very straight forward. Total money spent - total money made = Profit. Instead of you doing the maths, there are tools which can help.


http://www.emailmarketingroi.com/ http://www.bplans.com/business_calculators/email_marketing_roi_calculator/ http://www.toddle.com/marketing_roi_calculator/


Cost per contact is the total money spent / number of contacts made. Variations on the costs differ by focus. Being able to track conversion (i.e. sales) from the emails is the most vital element. The better your campaign planning and roll out the higher your ROI. Experience and iterative refinement will lead you to maximise your investment.


10 Next steps

Why not lean on the experience and capability of All n One to help you navigate all of your options to help you get the best ROI possible. Call us on +353 1 429 4000 or email us at support@bxpsoftware.com to see how we can help your campaign today.

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