Level 2 Certificate in Digital Promotion for Business (601/6673/3)

Unit 10 Email campaigns for business promotion (A/615/8544)(M/507/4159)

In this NCFE unit we will investigate and apply a range of digital promotional activities.

One of the fastest and most consistently growing areas of digital marketing is email. As a promotional tool for business it is very effective. The best way to place the email activity is within the framework of a campaign, with a selected audience, timing plan and fulfilment all playing a role towards the commercial effectiveness of a campaign.

1.1 Classify Prospects And Customers Into Appropriate Groups (Segments)

Our business is called Foydigtial which is an online digital agency offering services to clients in Ghana and Ethiopia. The importance of lists of potential and actual customers is paramount in undertaking an email campaign for our business promotions. Our segmentation make it easy for us to send people messages that matter to them, without overwhelming them with ones that don’t. Segmented campaigns result will have higher open rates and higher click through rates than unsegmented campaigns. The idea is to use API automation for us leads, prospects, hot prospects and customers that are at the top of the marketing funnel, middle and bottom.

Our idea customers are a business owners looking to start a new business venture overseas by expanding their existing service or products to new markets, entrepreneurs who have a track record in business who are redeveloping their online offerings. New startups with very good funding and a solid budget for a strong website presence and funds for future growth in the next year and more. They lack the skills in website design and development.

Our segments are the following:

Signup time

A the top of the marketing funnel are our short term leads, less than 6 months from sources like the website and all others. Plus short term leads less than 6 months from events like trade shows, etc.

At the middle of our marketing funnel are our prospects and hot subscribers from all sources less than 3 months and looking for a website build.

At the bottom of our marketing funnel are our customers with one website built over the past 12 months. Customers with full service and more. Repeater and VIP who keep coming back for more.

Other customers are called lapsed. Lapsed customers with no prospect for the next 12 months.
Lead long term we hear from again but do not act up to 6 months less than 12 months these are hesitant people comparing the market or who are not going to act.

Shared traits of all our emails subscribers

Sorted leads and prospective contacts based on data we have collected on signup on our forms in our database, like location, signup source trade shows in Ghana or Ethiopia, and language.

Behavior of our emails subscribers

The way our people engage with our brand will be a guide to how we talk to them. We will note behavior, like logging into our app, and pulling that data into our contact profiles. Click, open, or interaction with our emails. Website engagement within a specific timeframe. We will be looking at our activity feed, so we can dig in and see all the ways a person has engaged with our campaigns.

We may recapture visitors’ attention with a remarketing ad after they leave our site.

We will layer up to 5 segmentation criteria (location, source of sign up, language, engagement and speed of engagement) to find exactly who we want to talk to. We will save these search filters and update them automatically with the latest data, so we will always know who we are talking and know they are the right people.

We want to get to a place where it is like a 1-to-1 conversation with dynamic content, merged tag and the time sent is personalized.

For our customers we wish to send related service recommendation for recent buyers such as upgrade of new features, security support and integration.

1.2 Differentiate Between Levels Of Customer Engagement

The levels of engagement or their behavior is very important to us as a business. We have a list of potential and actual customers or groups. First we need to differentiate between them. The way our groups engage with our brand at the top, middle and bottom of the marketing funnel will be a guide to how we talk to them.

Potential customers can be hot prospect if they have high engagement with our brand after a welcome email. We must note this and react quickly to their actions from our campaigns. Click, open, or interaction with our emails are key factors at the top of the marketing funnel. We may introduce time limited offers and voucher code to act early.

Actual customers who have bought from us should be served an offer or discount voucher after they have high engagement with our brand at the bottom of the marketing funnel. Behavior like click, open, or interaction with our email newsletter is key. Plus behavior like website engagement within a specific timeframe. We will be looking at our activity feed or history and see all the ways a person has engaged with our campaigns so we will always know who we are talking too and know they are the right people for more offers of service.

As above we want to get to a place where it is like a 1-to-1 conversation with dynamic content, merged tag and the time sent is personalized.

In summary we target messages based on how our people engage with us or into email system as segmentation options. All this means is that we need to filter our audience data.

1.3 Select Recipients From A Database

In undertaking an email campaign for a business such as Foydigital. There is an important difference between a lists of potential and actual customers when sending our promotions.

GDPR has to be considered in all areas first when considering the importance of lists for business promotion. What does this mean? It means we will have a legal statement on our website which means we shall adhere to data protection. Potential customers or leads may not have agreed to this.

Quality of the list is based on our subscribers giving us their permission to email them.

In addition good email hygiene is very important for email marketing as we wish to convert qualified subscribers into customers. Only when the data we have in our database is up to date and segmented according to such factors like behavior do we have an idea of if a customer will be responsive to our promotional efforts.

In addition our signup forms will have captcha technology which stop spams from bots. We shall have double opt in out for groups and select priority people who want to do business in the next 3 months of sign up.

We shall remove inactive subscribers over time as well as those that become dead, soft bounce due to the service provider or who do not put us on their safe list so emails go through to their inbox.

We will always give the subscriber a change to opt out of our emails.

Service providers like Gmail and AOL may be legitimate domains but somethings they are not viable for our location to target so we shall monitor this and clear them out if needs be.

This section 1 above is about understanding

2.1 Define The Purposes And Objectives Of An Email Campaign

Foydigital is an online digital agency our clients based in west Africa Ghana and East Africa Ethiopia are Email will generate a third of online sales. Links to the sign up page will be placed over lots of places for instance on web pages, social media posts etc

We shall use a 6 month email campaign – this is where our email is used as the medium for a promotional message about the business activities. Foydigital service is website design and development. The campaigns will be based around the timetable of digital trade events in the local market. The plan is to execute an email campaign based on automation which has SMART objectives.

2.2 Describe The Stages In Planning A Campaign

The following is for the business called Foydigital. This is an online business which is a digital consultancy that designs and develops websites. The locations are African countries such as Ghana and Ethiopia. The plan will be SMART.

A campaign would be directed towards trade shows events like Africa Com. The idea is to target prospects for email capture. It is a 6 month plan with 4 month lead up to the show and 2 month conversion and after sales. We would like 1 paying customer per month from this campaign.

For leads from all exhibitions and trade shows, like business cards offline or third party competitions we will send them a welcome to our service please optin email. This is the activity at the top of the marketing funnel

For prospect subscribers registered on the site who we have signed up for newsletters via SEO, SM (Linkedin, Twitter and Youtube) QR codes, landing pages, meetups, webinars live discussions and have self optioned in. We will send 3 months worth of newsletter content. An example of this would be a how to guide, Q&A and top ten (all info graphics) on website design and development. The objective is for them to read more and go to the full website. Each will have an offer for them to encourage conversion to clients. This is activity at the middle of the marketing funnel

For our customers we shall send them content that asks for feedback and or a survey online with Survey Monkey. Survey results will also be used to monitor how users first came upon our business. Later asking for Trust pilot reviews. Then buy again offers for our other services like website updates. Finally we shall ask for referrals which will have an offer or discount and vouchers as an incentive. This is bottom of the marketing funnel activities.

Our main objective is to grow the database so the number of subscribers is a KPI and we will use that against our ROI.

Campaign in detail

Months 1 to 3 budget 20% of the total

The first activity is How to guides, Top 10 tips, Q&As handouts images/pictures/infographics, giving them an offer of free information. CTA with our email, landing page and website address we shall be looking for leads.

Months 2 to 4 budget 5%

The second activity is with social media Linkedin company information will be search for 5 prospects per month to also target in the country of Ghana and Ethiopia. These people will be qualified leads and targeted. How to guides.pdfs on website design and development for Africa. We shall be converting leads to subscribers.

Month 4 to 5 budget 60%

The third activity

Social media platforms will be used specifically Linkedin and Twitter to grow the network by connecting with prospects before, during and after the trade show. As these platforms are very good for networking with Business to Business. We shall be growing the database of subscribers.

The fourth activity is trade show face to face meetings and demos. Be very active in collecting emails. On the stand I will have How to guides, Top 10 tips, Q&A's handouts images/pictures/infographics, giving them free information with our CTA.

The fifth activity

After the trade show we update the main website, follow up with emails and social media platforms like Facebook.

Convert prospects subscribers to sales and customers via email and Skype.

Month 6 budget 10%

The sixth activity

Follow up with online Meetups, webinars and video calls on Skype to seal the deal this is the final activity of the main campaign with email for contracts.

Convert hot prospects subscribers to sales and customers via email and Skype.

Month 7 budget 5%

Feedback and learning

This last activity is learning from the facts. We will test, refine and improve by A/B testing. Our content timetable for hot prospects will be based on 3 articles for a total of 12 articles. Our hot prospect will get 3 months of content and therefore we shall see what they like based on analytics.

We shall perform campaign feedback this will be via an online survey with Survey Monkey. We would then go back to month 1 to improve the campaign based on qualitative and quantitative analytics.

After sales of other digital services to customers. We would then be looking for referrals.

The frequency of our delivery will be as follows:

For new leads 4 emails over 10 days 1, 3, 5 and 10 days
For prospects 3 emails over 3 months on the day they signed up
Customers 1 email every quarter

Read NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Digital Promotion for Business (601/6673/3) course units

2.3 Select Appropriate Tools And Techniques To Be Used In A Campaign

Key features in selecting a tool are:
Email deliverability rates, easy user interface, easy to management of contacts,  segmentation of users into groups, tracking the performance of email marketing campaigns and integration. The other features to consider are technical. These are the performance of the email server, CPU computer power i.e can it handle our database queries and bandwidth.

Constant Contact
The feature are Facebook ads integration, coupons, subject line A/B testing, 60-day free trial, Our comments are they have social media integration but not for linkedin.

SendinBlue
The features are AI algorithms to ensure maximum email deliverability, free email marketing plan that lets you send up to 300 emails per day, Facebook ads integration premium. Our comments Al tech sounds interesting for the long term investment in email.

Drip
The feature are intelligent marketing automation tools, smarter email segmenting, list groups and a visual workflow builder, free trial. Our comments are good but not a stand out.

GetResponse
The features are marketing automation tools which allow you to create smart automated campaigns, beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, tracking, and autoresponders, integrates with third party lead generation software like OptinMonster, SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, 30-day free trial. Our comments. Lots of features to save time.

Mailchimp
The features are forever free email marketing service plan, delivery times based on user’s timezones integrate MailChimp with WordPress. When it comes to marketing automation features, Mailchimp platform is quite limited when compared to other providers in our list such as Drip or ConvertKit support is often slow. Our comments Lack of integration and help is via email.

Foydigital a digital agency will use GetResponse software for our email activities. Why have we chosen this tool? We have chosen GetResponse because integration is the best way to save time. The automation of tasks being a key feature in this tool offerings makes this brand a stand out winner. This makes it also good value for the price.

Which one we will not use and why mailchimp lacks integration. Cost is free for up to 2000 users or email addresses.

See https://www.getapp.com/ for software comparing.

2.4 Estimate Fulfilment And Response Requirements

Foydigital a digital agency will use list growth rate, open rate, click through rate and conversion rate.

We need to grow the email list to start with so this is the most important metric for us at this time. We would like to reach 500 emails within 12 months.

The purpose of email marketing for our business is to build trust over time. The way we will do this is keeping an eye on these metrics. Open rates, click through and conversion rates.

Once the email list has grown to 500 subscribers we will then consider the campaign we are sending in detail. 500 subscribers is a significant level for a small business such as a digital agency. We will then measure open rates which are a measure of how many users have opened our emails once successfully landing in their email boxes. If we achieve a rate of 4% we will consider this to be a success.

We are now interested in if the user has clicked through to our landing page. These are important figures for measuring our conversion rate. We aim to get a conversion rate of at least 2.8% in the first 3 months then a conversation rate of 3% in the next 3 months and then 3.2% in the next 3 month Holding a conversion rate of 3.5% for the final 3 months of the year. A click through to our website then becomes important as we should be looking at how effective our links are. We shall have 3 or 4 links which will be a combination of buttons and text.

We would like subscribers to visit our tips and how tos section of our website. Link will be via button and Text links like 1. Read now 2.To learn more about website design and development click here 3. how to set … 4.tips on how to ...5. read about web design... and how to pick the right option for you.

We will test, refine and improve by A/B testing as our content time table for hot prospects will be based on 12 articles. Our hot prospect will get 3 months of content and therefore we shall see what they like the content based on analytics given above and ultimately conversion to clients.

This section 2 above is about understanding