I wrote a press release for a book I recently published. Because I work for an email marketing software and services company, my initial thought was about list management and content distribution. It’s always good when the people developing and selling software actually use it themselves in real life scenarios and not just when they are troubleshooting a support issue for a customer. I must say that objectively, I really love using GroupMail. Being proud of the product or service that you are promoting makes life so much more enjoyable.
So, I put together a good list of media contacts and imported them from Excel into GroupMail. I called the appropriate editor for each publication to give them a heads up that I was sending a press release their way in relation to a book I just published. Then, I sent my first campaign, using GroupMail’s database filters, to my media contacts in New York. The next night, I sent it to media contacts in Seattle. The ability to send individual, personalized messages to large groups of people while ensuring the privacy of each recipient along with the ability to filter my campaign to targeted subsets of my list using database filters made my job very easy.
I tracked the open and click through rates of the campaign with our GroupMetrics email tracking service. Because the list was small and very targeted – and because I gave the recipients advance notice with a phone call; open and click-through rates were very high. Normally, average click-through rates for email campaigns range from 2-18 percent of messages sent.
A day after I sent the release, I was contacted by one editor in the Seattle area who was interested in doing a story about the book in the June issue of their magazine. I was also notified by a newspaper in New York that they would be covering it.
The ability to track email and get immediate feedback or requests for followup from recipients makes email my preferred tool for press release and other communication campaigns.
As a customer, I can say that I’m a big fan of GroupMai!
Comments
2 Responses to “An Effective Press Release Strategy with Email Marketing”
open and click-through rates were very high. Normally, average click-through rates for email campaigns range from 2-18 percent of messages sent.
What were the click through rates?
My click through rate was 72 percent. But mind you, I called most recipients in advance and gave them verbal notice that I would be following up with an email release; so they were expecting it. The campaign was also sent to a small, very targeted list. Certainly not indicative of click-through rates you can expect for most campaigns — unless you’re willing to call everyone on your list before you send an email. Something not very practical when your emailing a few thousand people.
Industry type and list size also play a big role in open and click-through rates. Generally, smaller lists yield much higher opens and click-through rates.
Read Smaller Email List, Bigger Open and Click-Through Rates