Alan Gayle is a sales and marketing consultant specialising in the construction industry. In this column he offers advice on how to make an impact in the market. He continues his examination of email marketing.

This month I want to continue with the email marketing theme that we started in August.

As I stated last month, email marketing is a huge subject, to attempt to cover it in detail would require the entire magazine. My intention, therefore, is to give you some basic essential information.

If you decide to use email marketing in your own business – and in most cases it is likely it would prove beneficial – may I suggest you research the subject before you dive in because it’s very easy to make fundamental errors that will have an adverse affect on your results.

Alternatively, take some advice from a marketing agency that is familiar with your market.

Last month, I set the scene and explained some of the benefits of email marketing and a couple of the potential pitfalls. This time I will cover objectives and the e-mailshot’s content.

Your objectives will determine the type of emailshot you send. If it’s to reach potential new customers / clients, consider what is important to them and enclose your promotional message within some useful information. If it’s to promote new products or special offers to existing clients, it may take the form of a newsletter. If it’s to revive some dormant customers that are familiar with your company but haven’t bought from you in while, the style will be different again.

There’s no problem if you have all these objectives and more besides, but only incorporate one at a time. Use one compelling message/offer to achieve one objective in each

e-mailshot.

Of course, you can include additional information, but don’t overdo it and don’t detract from the central message. This is a common mistake. The recipients of emails will only spend a limited amount of time looking at them. Think how long it takes you to delete the marketing emails you receive.

Your objective should be realistic.

If your emailshot is promoting half price beer tokens to students the week before a local festival where the tokens can be redeemed, you can reasonably expect an immediate increase in sales.

But if you want to promote your contracting services to potential clients or your building products to trade contractors, a more realistic objective would be to generate some enquiries with the aim of converting some of them into new customers over a period of time.

Bear in mind that what interests a merchant/distributor will probably not interest a main contractor or an architect.

And just because something is of interest to you, doesn’t mean it will be of interest to your prospects. This is another common mistake. Try to put yourself in the shoes of your customers.

Now, moving on to the content: No matter what your objective is, the first and most important consideration is to keep it short.

For the construction industry, I believe it’s better for it to be too short than too long. Include links to additional information on your website rather than putting everything in the body of the e-mailshot.

Many of the considerations for a good emailshot were covered in this column when I wrote about advertising in the November 2010 issue. You can re-read the article on the Natural Stone Specialist website. Click on ‘News and views’, scroll down and click on ‘search all the news in the archive’ then select December 2010. Enter my name in the ‘keywords’ box.

Before you do that, let me introduce you to the acronym AIDA. It stands for Attention Interest Desire Action. It was invented in 1921 but even in the digital age remains relevant.

Attention: This is your headline or, in the case of an emailshot, your subject line. It’s of paramount importance because it will determine whether or not the email gets opened. For a successful campaign, do not underestimate the importance of getting this right.

Interest: You need to convey the benefits your company offers in a way that is interesting to the recipient.

Desire: Your customer must be moved to want to do business with you. Or at least to explore that possibility by getting in touch with you.

Action: Call To Action (CTA). Tell your recipients exactly what you want them to do. For example, your CTA could be for them to request samples from you, request a CPD seminar, visit your website or request more information.

And don’t forget, information technology is moving quickly. A lot of people will view your emailshot on their mobile phones, so all the content needs to be designed and optimised for readability on smartphones.

The two final areas of email marketing I will cover next month are your database of email addresses and making the most of the data you receive as a result of the campaign. It is known as analytics.

Alan Gayle is a sales and marketing consultant specialising in the construction industry. He spent 19 years with some of the UK’s leading building product manufacturers and has worked in the stone sector for the past eight years. Alan now runs Gayle Associates, which provides a range of sales and marketing services for small and medium sized sized contractors and suppliers. His clients are seeking growth but the management are too busy to deal with this function of business themselves and they don’t want the commitment of a full-time employee.