It is just an email campaign why have this big marketing plan why don't we just try it and see what happens?
Too many times we go off half baked and then wonder why our marketing efforts are not working. Well we don't have to write a book to have a plan. We just need one that includes the following:
Objectives
Audience Definition
Key Messages
Format
Tactics
Timeline
Budget
Measurement
First, determine what is it that you want the e-mail program to achieve from marketing perspectives. What is it you are trying to achieve by emailing your clients or prespective clients. Are you trying to raise their awareness of your site or product? Are you trying to build a mailing list, get subscribers for your ezine, sell a product or close a sale? Once this is decided you have your objectives. For example you could have the objective of writing an article sending it to 1000 publishers of ezines to ask them to publish your article. Who are you trying to reach? What do you know about them? How would the editors profit from you sending them articles? Editors are always looking for good content and they in return promote your business. Your audiance definition then would be ezine editors. Perhaps you could go to a site like To find ezine publisher addresses, use databases such as: http://www.homeincome.com/search-it/ezine/ to find ezine editors addresses. What is your article about? Search ezines that cover this topic. How many publishers will you submit to in what amount of time? It is always good to target your articles as you would your ads for otherwise maybe a lot of people will see your article but they won't be very interested as they are not an audiance that is interested in this subject.
Next what technology do you need to get these messages out? Are you going to submit them to ezine announcement groups such as:
DISTRIBUTION LISTS
ArticleAnnounce
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SITES
EzineArticles.com http://www.ezinearticles.com/ (link fixed 09/18/02 EMV)
Articles (For Success) Zone http://www.mega-success.com/articles/submit.shtml
Marketing-Seek.com http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
Idea Marketers http://www.ideamarketers.com/
The UK Marketer http://www.theukmarketer.com/ (link no longer avail. 09/18/02 EMV)
World Wide Information Outlet (WWIO) http://certificate.net/wwio/
http://www.topten.org
http://www.selfgrowth.com
http://www.top7business.com
http://www.WritingTree.com
http://www.writebusiness.com
http://www.dotcom.ca/iw/submissions.htm
http://www.mailbiz.com
http://www.ultimateprofits.com
http://www.TheFreeSearch.com
(link no longer avail. 09/18/02 EMV) http://www.seedyourweb.com
(link no longer avail. 09/18/02 EMV)
INDIVIDUAL PUBLISHERS
Revolution Online
http://www.revolutionteam.com If you write business articles send them to mailto:dean@revolutionteam.com Webmaster, Dean Garrison publishes a weekly ezine and also a print magazine monthly.
WebmasterZine.com
Welcomes article contribution from you. Articles pertaining to website marketing, designing or ecommerce are welcomed. Please submit all articles to mailto:articles@webmasterzine.com Your article headline should be in the email subject line. If selected, your articles will be published on our website or in our weekly ezine.
Do you need software like ezine announce to submit your articles? Or a service there are several services out there that will announce your articles for you to 80 or more directories.
Your budget may help you answer many of the questions above. Smaller budgets may mean you complete a lot of the work in-house.
Finally, establish criteria for measuring the program. An awareness program may call for some baseline research so you'll know how you are doing. How you measure your sucess is measured by what your objective were. Were you looking for increased subscribers to your ezine. Then the measure would be an increase in subscribers. Were you looking for increased traffic to your sales letter? Then did the traffic increase?
Were you looking for more sales then did your sales increase?
The bottom line is this: a little time spent planning your program is important because your sucess rate will increase 300% with a little planning.
About the Author
Judi Singleton is the publisher of Jassmine's Journal there is a free edition and a paid edition to Jassmine's Journal if you would like to subscribe to the free edition go to http://www.motherearthpublishing.com if you want to subscribe to the paid edition go to http://www.motherearthpublishing.com/advertise.shtml and subscribe to the paid edition at the bottom of the page