People have a better attitude about receiving email marketing communications than they used to. Looks like it's time to ramp up your email efforts. In this whitepaper, you'll get an overview of email marketing along with advice on choosing an email marketing vendor that best suits your small business needs.

1. BUSINESS.COM GUIDE TO EMAIL MARKETING

2. CONTENTS
OVERVIEW OF EMAIL MARKETING 3
TRENDS 7
CHOOSING A VENDOR 9
CALCULATING COSTS 10
COMPARISON CHECKLIST 11
GLOSSARY OF TERMS 12

3. 3
WHY
Email marketing is a broad category of services
that encompasses everything from one-time emails,
to newsletters, to systems that analyze customer
behavior and tailor messages with tremendous
precision. Here’s a rundown of the kinds of messages
you can send using email marketing services:
Newsletters. Send company newsletters once a day,
once a week, once a month, or once a year. Send
different newsletters to different segments of your
list, such as customers, employees, or investors; or
covering different topics.
Acknowledgment Emails. Send notifications that you’ve
received a communication, that a transaction has been
processed, or that a package has been shipped.
Direct Email. Marketing communications that are
simply messages, not regularly scheduled newsletters.
They could be triggered by event promotions, coupons,
discounts, new product announcements, earnings
reports, milestones, or any other reason for reaching
out to the mailing list.
Reminder Emails. These emails might remind
customers about an event they indicated they wanted
to attend. They might also serve as reminders about an
action that hasn’t yet been completed, such as items
left in an online shopping cart, or a registration that
hasn’t been verified.
Notification Emails. Subscribers to some systems can
specify when they’d like to be notified about certain
tasks. These are used, for example, for low-balance
OVERVIEW OF EMAIL MARKETING
“SEND DIFFERENT NEWSLETTERS TO
DIFFERENT SEGMENTS OF YOUR LIST, SUCH AS
CUSTOMERS, EMPLOYEES, OR INVESTORS; OR
COVERING DIFFERENT TOPICS.”

4. 4
notifications by banks, or notifications that
a new comment or message has been
posted or sent.
Timed Messages. These are often used in
“lead nurturing” or “drip marketing” to check
back with prospects on a timed schedule
with a series of messages designed to
increase engagement.
Autoresponders. These are email
addresses that automatically return a
preprogrammed message in response to
any email received at that address. An
example would be an email address such as
contest-rules@company.com, which would
instantly send rules to a contest in response
to any email sent to that address.
Lifecycle Messages. Messages that are sent
depending on a person’s level of involvement
with the marketer. For example, lifecycle lists
are often divided into prospects, customers,
and lapsed customers. Different email
messages are then sent out depending on
the person’s position in the cycle.

5. 5
HOW
You might have heard that email marketing
is illegal. It’s not. Like everything else, it’s
governed by the laws of the land where the
marketing takes place. For example, laws
against making fraudulent statements apply
to commercial email. In the United States,
email marketers are required to follow the
rules outlined in the CAN-SPAM Act or be
subject to possible fines.
Perhaps the most important prohibition
in the CAN-SPAM Act is that it’s illegal to
send unsolicited commercial email (UCE, or
“spam”). Unless others have agreed to receive
email from you, or “opted-in,” it is illegal to
send them a commercial pitch. Because of this
law, many email marketing services require
you to prove that the people on your list opted-
in. Some email marketing services will ask you
to write to everyone on your list and have them
subscribe in order to verify that you have their
permission to communicate via email.
“SOME EMAIL MARKETING SERVICES WILL ASK YOU TO
WRITE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST AND HAVE THEM
SUBSCRIBE IN ORDER TO VERIFY THAT YOU HAVE THEIR
PERMISSION TO COMMUNICATE VIA EMAIL.”

6. 6
WHAT
You should avoid services that offer to sell you email
addresses. No reputable email marketing service
will allow you to import a list of purchased email
addresses, because there’s no way to guarantee that
the people on that list opted-in.
That doesn’t mean you can’t market to people
who aren’t already on your list. You can often send
marketing messages through companies that have
large opt-in lists. But buying email addresses for the
purpose of email marketing is not a best practice and
could get you into legal trouble.
You should also avoid vendors who’ve been
reprimanded for violating email marketing rules. By
searching for the vendor’s name along with the word
“blacklist,” you should be able to quickly find out if
a company is listed on any of the major blacklists of
known spammers. If the vendor is on a blacklist of
spammers, there’s a high likelihood that messages sent
through that vendor will get trapped in spam filters and
will never reach the people on your list.
“YOU SHOULD ALSO AVOID VENDORS
WHO’VE BEEN REPRIMANDED FOR
VIOLATING EMAIL MARKETING RULES.”

7. 7
Email marketing is the art and science of
communicating a marketing message using email. It
involves creating compelling marketing messages,
gathering email addresses of prospects, using
software to deliver messages to prospects, and
tracking the results of email marketing campaigns.
But is it effective? Absolutely! A 2011 study from Ziff-
Davis showed that email marketing is the most effective
marketing technique used by businesses-with twice the
performance of direct mail marketing and five times the
return of television advertising!
Forty percent of businesses expect to spend more on
email marketing next year. At the same time, Forrester
Research shows that people have a better attitude
about receiving email marketing communications than
they used to. From 2006 to 2010, the percentage of
people saying they received “too many” email offers
dropped from 77% to less than 50%.
TRENDS
“IT INVOLVES CREATING COMPELLING MARKETING
MESSAGES, GATHERING EMAIL ADDRESSES OF
PROSPECTS, USING SOFTWARE TO DELIVER MESSAGES
TO PROSPECTS, AND TRACKING THE RESULTS.”

8. 8
Businesses report that they consider email marketing to
be somewhat effective or very effective with respect to
the following:
• Building brand awareness
• Supporting offline marketing programs
• Increasing website traffic
• Increasing sales revenue
• Improving customer relations and retention
Experienced marketers report that the shift to mobile
delivery of email to smartphones and tablets is the
biggest change happening in the industry, so be sure to
ask about mobile optimization when signing up with an
email marketing service.
Another trend is timed messages or drip campaigns,
where messages are automatically sent to subscribers
on a scheduled basis.
A major priority for email marketers is better list
segmentation-the ability to divide a list by such factors
as how recently a purchase was made, how often the
customer buys, the average size of a customer’s order,
and other factors. Be sure to ask your email service
provider how your list can be segmented, and how
many variables you can track (“custom fields”).
Combining list segmentation and drip campaigns
results in lifecycle segmentation, where the messages
are customized and scheduled based on how recently
prospects engaged, and how active their involvement
has been. Email marketers using lifecycle segmentation
report five times the results of those sending identical
messages to everyone on the list.
Social sharing features have extended the reach of
email marketing messages, making it easy for people to
“like” or share your emails. Almost all email marketing
services now include social-sharing features in their
monthly packages at no additional cost.
“BE SURE TO ASK ABOUT MOBILE
OPTIMIZATION WHEN SIGNING UP WITH AN
EMAIL MARKETING SERVICE.”

9. 9
CHOOSING A VENDOR
How large is your list? Most email marketing services
price according to the size of your mailing list, or “house
list.” There are many no-frills services that are free for less
than 500 names. When you go over 500 or 1,000 names,
prices start from $5 per month to $20 per month, and go up
from there. For lists with more than 10,000 names, prices
are often over $100 per month.
How often do you plan to mail? The second major
factor besides the size of your list is how often you plan
to mail to a list. Some services price by the number
of messages sent. For example, a rate of 5 cents per
message would cost you $50 every time you mail to a
1,000-person list. If you plan to email to your list several
times a month, you might look for a plan that charges by
the size of the list and not the number of emails.
What add-on services appeal to you? The third factor in
helping determine the right email marketing vendor relates to
the extra services you need or want for your business. Some
companies offer assistance with the copy-that is, writing
effective email pitches and subject lines. Other companies
will help with the creative-that is, designing good-looking
messages. Some services can test different versions of
a message before mailing to the whole list. And several
email marketing programs are integrated with customer
relationship management programs (CRM) that facilitate
greater tracking capabilities and more strategic engagement
tactics, such as lifecycle marketing.

10. 10
CALCULATING COSTS
Free Plans. Some of the software and services used to
manage email marketing campaigns are available free
of charge. For example, many email service providers
will allow you to manage a mailing list of up to, say, 500
contacts, for free. However, you can cause yourself a lot
of legal trouble with email marketing if you don’t know
what you’re doing. It’s usually worth it to pay for a service
that has a good reputation.
Basic Monthly Plans. Expect to spend between $5
per month and $20 per month for an email marketing
service that will handle up to 1,000 contacts and provide
excellent tools to ensure your compliance with email
marketing laws. Your basic plan should include some
ability to segment the list, along with tracking important
stats such as the delivery rate, bounce rate, open rate,
and clickthrough rate.
Extra Charges for Large Lists and Frequent Mailers.
You can expect to pay as much as $100 per month if
your mailing list is over 10,000 names, or you send more
than 10,000 messages per month. Most companies will
quote an additional price-per-contact for a very large list,
or a price-per-message for very busy mailing lists.
Optional Testing, Analysis, and Management
Services. Best practices in email marketing include
testing different subject lines and messages first before
mailing out to a large list. Many firms offer tools to
make testing subject lines or messages easy. They
automatically analyze the different response rates and
adjust the mailing based on the analytics. Another
optional service is spam analysis. Email messages
are rejected for a variety of reasons, such as a wrong
email address or a full mailbox. Spam analysis software
examines bounced messages to determine the reason
the message bounced, rather than just deleting every
bounce from the mailing list. Cross-platform testing
is a way to see how compatible a message is with a
variety of devices before actually sending the message.
These sophisticated optional services can significantly
improve the results.

11. 11
This checklist will help you quickly assess
the best vendor for your needs.
Cost
Cost For The Chosen Individual Item
Shipping Costs
Excess Charge for Colored Items
Cost for Sample Packaging
Discounts Offered
1st-tier Bulk Discount Amount
2nd-tier Bulk Discount Amount
3rd-tier Bulk Discount Amount
Frequent Customer Discount
Item Imprinting
Imprinted With Business Name
Imprinted With Business Logo
Imprinted With Slogan
Pricing on Front And Back
Extra Charge for Color Printing
Options Available
Packaging for Sample Items
Shirt-color Choices
Shirt Sizes Available
People to Hand Out Freebies
My Needs Vendor 1 Vendor 2 Vendor 3
EMAIL MARKETING ITEMS CHECKLIST

12. 12
Employee Motivation Objectives: A set of goals that
an organization is attempting to achieve by giving staff
members recognition and/or gifts to promote a more
efficient and loyal workforce.
Promotional Campaign: A marketing strategy that a
business uses; it offers promotional items to generate
interest from both new and existing customers in the
products and services the company is offering.
Promotional Items: Offered by a business to potential
or existing customers as part of a promotional campaign.
Promotional Objectives: The goals that a business
sets in an attempt to acquire new customers or retain
old customers.
Sales Objectives: Offering free promotional items to
attract customers, with the goal of reaching a specific
minimum increase in sales.
Trade Show: An organized event where businesses
in a certain industry can showcase products and
services. Promotional items are frequently purchased for
distribution at such shows.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS