2017 Taiwan Growth Hacker Annual Conference: Make good use of content and growth thinking to make email marketing even more powerful

In the forum “Future E-commerce Growth Strategies from Inbound Marketing” at the 2017 Taiwan Growth Hacker Annual Conference, the organizer invited industry experts such as Qiu Yuting, Li Zhenwei, Jian Shijie and Xu Youjian to discuss the use of a wider range of inbound marketing (Inbound Marketing), combining pull (content) and push (advertising, public relations) and other methods to form new driving forces for e-commerce growth.

In [Inbound Marketing](http://blog.gogopartners.com/inbound-marketing-%E6%98%AF%E4%BB%80%E9%BA%BC%E7%82%BA%E4%BD%95%E6%98%AF%E7%B6%B2%E8%B7%AF%E8%A1%8C%E9%8A%B7 %E6%88%90%E5%8A%9F%E7%9A%84%E9%97%9C%E9%8D%B5), there is a tool that everyone is familiar with, and that is [email marketing] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_marketing) (Email Marketing), or derived eDM. Perhaps it is because many companies, large and small, have commonly used this tool in the past, but people have forgotten its existence and even ignored the power of email marketing to attract customers.

Email marketing can use content calendar to manage potential consumers

Because content hacker must be familiar with not only content production on the owned media side, but also must be able to produce content for paid media (Paid Media) and news media (Earned Media). Therefore, we also need to understand how to integrate core concepts into all content. The so-called “email marketing” is naturally no exception.

Since email marketing tools and methodologies have become quite mature, it is recommended that friends who are interested in trying this tool again can first refer to the concept of [content hacker] (https://www.contenthacker.today/2017/12/20171206-lecture-summary.html) mentioned in the second content hacker lecture (CHL2), change it into an editorial calendar for the e-newsletter, and then use it as a landing page with the official website or blog.

In other words, the advantage of using e-newsletter content to manage existing users and potential customers is that it can be applied to two different forms, such as B2B and B2C.

Don’t underestimate eDM, careful management has great power in attracting customers

The founder of Flydove Information 李智伟 (Tiger), who is known as the man who is the best at sending EDM in Taiwan, pointed out that email marketing itself is actually timeless and is not as outdated and difficult to use as everyone thinks. According to surveys, eDM is one of the digital marketing tools with the highest conversion rate in North America, and its effectiveness is even higher than search engine optimization (SEO).

On the other hand, the effect of using eDM in Taiwan is not as good as that in North America. The main reason is that many owners have not prepared content carefully, or to be more precise, they do not have a clearly positioned content strategy.

Li Zhenwei emphasized that the two major requirements for operating email marketing are: first, obtaining the list with the user’s permission, and using streamlined questionnaire activities to attract potential users to fill in. After all, it is not too difficult to obtain email lists from consumers nowadays. For example, Flydove once had a client who only had a few thousand lists. After one year of operation, it actually accumulated a considerable number of more than 200,000 lists. It can be said that the results are outstanding. In addition, Groupon Taiwan, a well-known group buying website, has an astonishing record of generating about 45% of its revenue in the past from email marketing.

The second requirement is that the credit rating of the sender (that is, the owner itself) must comply with regulations to reduce the chance of being intercepted by telecom operators. At the same time, try to choose sending times on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, rather than on Saturdays and Sundays when everyone is off, as the effect will be greatly reduced. If it is sent successfully, you can also learn more about the consumer’s behavior pattern from the process of sending and opening eDM.

According to Li Zhenwei’s experience, the loyal customer click-to-open rate (CTOR) of the general e-commerce industry is about 15%.

Li Zhenwei took a customer who sells Gundam models as an example to explain that pictures of popular products should be enlarged in eDM to attract target audiences to click. At the same time, the owner must also do a good job of Call-to-Action, so that the target audience (TA) will have the desire to click, so as to achieve the effect of transferring orders.

In addition, everyone should also pay attention to the mobile device friendliness of the email. Just like in email, if the pictures and text are too small to read on a mobile phone, people will soon lose their patience. Therefore, when designing content, you must enlarge the picture, simplify the wording and refine the eye-catching degree of the copy in order to attract the target audience to open it.

Understand consumer habits and promote transfer orders, making eDM operations even more powerful.

Li Zhenwei said half-jokingly that all business owners must realize that when they do email marketing, they are sending spam. It is just a matter of degree. But as long as the owner is serious about providing useful content to the target audience, the recipient can specifically pick the eDM out of the spam box and review it again.

It is true that the purpose of email marketing is to drive conversions and understand user behavior (which can be paired with hot spot analysis); therefore, you should not put content in your emails that may be annoying or objectionable to consumers, but should carefully design content that will interest consumers. The industry should also think carefully and use A/B Testing techniques with widely different situations to test the effects of different content to understand what kind of titles and content the target audience likes to read? And then achieve the effect of attracting customers.

★ Content Hacking Activity Preview:

• January 2018 Content Hacking Lecture (CHL3)─Create your content marketing strategy
• February 2018 Content Hacking Lecture (CHL4)─Creating calls to action for your content

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Further reading

• 2017 Taiwan Growth Hacker Annual Conference: To promote user growth, why not first decouple brand and content
• 2017 Taiwan Growth Hacker Annual Conference: How can e-commerce players regain content dominance from Facebook?
• Master the secret skills: 2016-2017 Taiwan Growth Hacker Annual Conference Essence Lazy Pack

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