E-mail is still one of the most effective, and cost-effective marketing mediums available to casino affiliates of all levels. Unfortunately, the days of just whipping up a simple e-mail campaign and letting it loose are long gone.
Today’s e-mail marketing requires some serious advance planning and can generate a multitude of headaches if you’re not careful. In recent blog posting on Hubspot.com, blogger Anum Hussain talked to some e-mail experts to find solutions to some of the most painful e-mail marketing issues.
Here’s what she found.
Segment Your List to Increase Clickthroughs
No two players are alike, but chances are you’ve got enough information in your e-mail lists to segment them out a bit. According to Hubspot Social Scientist Dan Zarella, simply dividing your list in two or three segments can boost clickthrough rates by nearly one percent.
One percent might not sound like much, but any gambler would be happy to increase his or her chances of success by one percent.
Institute Long-Term A/B Testing
A/B testing strikes some affiliates as mad scientist stuff, but the info it provides is invaluable. If you’re A/B testing every e-mail drop you’ll gather a treasure trove of marketing intelligence that’s going to dial in on exactly which tactics are working and which ones should be headed toward the scrap heap.
Make Them Mobile Friendly
Do you get frustrated when you open an e-mail on your smart phone that hasn’t been formatted for mobile? If it’s annoying to you, your customers are probably thinking the same thing.
You can do an end run around this pain-in-the-neck by losing all that fancy formatting and presenting e-mail’s in a single column format. If your copy is good enough, and your offers serve up true value, plain and simple should work just fine.
(You’ll also be doing a service to the 74% of smart phone users who check e-mail on their phones.)
Save Time by Re-purposing Old e-Mails
Re-purposing content isn’t exactly a cutting edge marketing technique, but it’s definitely a useful one. Smart e-mail marketers have no problem slicing and dicing the best bits from their most successful efforts and sending them back out into the market. (And you already know what those part are because you’ve A/B tested them, right?)
Let’s just be clear on one thing; no one is suggesting that your send out the exact same e-mail to the same people over and over. Just send the good parts and you’ll be all good.
Staying Ahead of Mistakes
We’ve all been there; you send out an e-mail to two or three thousand of your closest friends and suddenly realize you’ve included some ugly typos in the text.(This is also the time when you learn that, unsend, is a command with a very short lifespan.)
The best way of avoiding this stomach churning situation is by instituting, and following, a rock solid e-mail production list. Your list doesn’t have to be complicated, it just needs to hit a few high points like:
- Proof spelling
- Check hyperlinks
- Send a test e-mail
Running down the list helps slow you down and prevent the kinds of mistakes that keep you from looking your best.
Finally
E-mail marketing isn’t always simple, but it doesn’t have to be painful. If you follow the advice they’re handing out over at HubSpot, you can make a lot of your e-mail headaches disappear.
How do you approach your most painful e-mail problems? Share your tips in the comments section below.