Email Marketing Tips for Reaching an International Audience

Targeted, inexpensive, fast, trackable, and more reporting than traditional offline direct mail techniques, email marketing is widely used by international marketers.

But although the why is an easy question to answer, the how is the one that causes the most headaches.

By rushing into email and not using reputable email marketing service providers, many seem to be carrying out successful strategies. Dig deeper and it’s a different story:

Building a database for the future

Marketers have adopted recent EU legislation that ensures people “subscribe” to their messages and respect data privacy. The flaw is in the amount of data that people collect. By not integrating data capture techniques for postal address, phone number, and fax, a business becomes hostage to always using email marketing.

Industry unsubscribe rates are reported between 0.2% and 5% (MarketingSherpa). Over time, without investing in an acquisition program, your database will dwindle. The integration of data capture (often after the first contact) of additional contact details provides an alternative communication channel when the email route ends.

the appropriate message

The fundamental question is whether to start an email newsletter program or adopt ad hoc promotional messages. Most favor the newsletter route, committing to:

• reach critical mass: Get enough volume and the list will automatically play through recommendations. If you don’t get enough, your list will degenerate, which means expensive list acquisition programs.
• happy: You are bound to provide regular, high-quality content that people value. Although good content is expensive, it has a clear association with your brand.
• Synchronization: undertakes to provide regular communication. Having a newsletter of only two issues suggests that you have nothing to say.

These factors come down to resources. Running an email newsletter program is not the low-cost, low-risk activity that many marketers believe it to be.

So does this mean that ad hoc promotional messages are key? Industry research by Marketing Sherpa shows that email newsletters have a 10x lower unsubscribe rate (0.2