Email Marketing Campaign for Tilly Art

Discuss about the Email Marketing Campaign for Tilly Art.

Introduction

The report intends to create a marketing campaign for a small business enterprise Tilly’s Art and Office Supplies. The report makes thorough use of consumer insights to develop an email marketing campaign for an art and craft business. The campaign is developed by using the concept of Integrated Marketing Plan wherein different theories and marketing concepts are applied. Branding and positioning concept is being applied to develop an email marketing campaign by considering the target audience and end consumer of the product. The report would also justify the use of inherent drama and pre-emptive strategy for the campaign. The product which is to be marketed is being identified strategically using the sales and revenue figures of the business.

Integrated Marketing is one of the most effective methods of marketing a product or service by directly reaching the target audience. It makes use of traditional and modern marketing strategies to convey the core message of the organization to the customers. It uses advertising, personal selling, public relations, direct marketing, social media and every single element of marketing to reach the potential customer (Belch & Belch, 2014). It is advisable for an organization to use this strategy in order to develop a sustainable marketing model and achieve its long term goals and objectives.

Integrated marketing is very effective in case of small medium enterprises and helps in reaching its end users through a combination of traditional and modern marketing practices. It helps them in their product and service promotions and creating brand awareness among the target customers. This contributes to increase in sales and in turn yields higher profits and revenue for the organization. It couples different methods together to create a successful communication way of conveying the message to the target audience (Belch & Belch, 2014). The organization needs a plan for the campaign to begin with which consists of a target audience, campaign objective, strategic approach, message content, style and tone. 

Marketing Plan

The marketing plan would ensure that the campaign is carried out in the desired manner. Digital marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies in current scenario in terms of cost, reach ability and response time. The results are very quick because most of the customers have access to internets every time through extensive use of electronic gadgets such as mobile, ipod, iphone etc (Tuten, 2008). There are many methods to employ digital marketing plan such as social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization etc. The plan would make use of email marketing strategy for an art and craft supply store ‘Tilly’s Art and Office Supplies’.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is widely used marketing tactics to promote a company’s products and services. It is a cost effective method to reach millions of customers through a single campaign. It is a process of sending a commercial message to a targeted group such as college students, professionals, doctors etc. The commercial message is generally built upon the idea to create awareness of the product or service among the targeted customers and create an image of the company among the targeted audience. Email marketing is used to develop a relationship with the customer and build loyalty, trust and brand awareness. It is a method to convince the customer to purchase the company product or service. This suggests that the message in the email has to be built in such a way that it engages the audience through its content and layout such as giving discounts, offers, coupons etc (Chaffey, 2012).

Before the plan is laid out, the report would present the company profile for which the plan has to be carried out.

Tilly’s Art and Office Supplies is a local supplier for art and craft and office stationeries in Australia. Its customers are artists, students, professionals, offices etc. Its products are, artist easels, studio easel, table easel, tripod easel, painting canvases boards and rolls, stretched canvas, linen canvas, acrylic and oil colors, water colors, pencils, brushes, drawing board, office stationary and other art and craft material. It is a small medium business enterprise which sells art and craft material and office stationery (Tilly’s Art and Office Supplies, 2016).

After an analysis, it was found that 50% of its sales are generated from the art and craft stationery products and margin is also greater in these products contributing to 80 percent of its business revenue (Solga, 2013).

Therefore, the organization decided to create a marketing campaign to target the colleges and institutes in Australia to give a boost in its sales revenue and making more profit.

Email marketing would thus be used as a marketing campaign and a commercial message would be sent to the purchase manager of all the colleges and institutes located in Australia.

MailChimp: Email Marketing Service

An email marketing service is required in order to launch an email marketing campaign. The campaign would make use of one of the most renowned email marketing services called mailchimp. Mailchimp allows entering the huge database of the target audience, designing a template for the campaign and scheduling the campaign as per the requirement of the user. An account has to be created on mailchimp to enjoy its services. Mailchimp provides free services for the initial campaigns and if one wants to go beyond a particular limit, it offers its paid services. Through mailchimp services one can easily send emails to thousands of internet users at once (MailChimp, 2016).

Target Audience

The target audience is colleges and institutes located in Australia which requires art and craft stationery materials such as easel, cotton canvas, colors, pencils, brushes, boards etc. The purchase of stationery products is managed by the purchase manager of these institutes and colleges. Therefore, the campaign has to be designed in such a manner so that it attracts the purchase managers of these colleges and institutes (Solga, 2013). The content, layout, design, color, flow all of them should be combined to create an effective message which is read by the audience.

Colleges and professional institutes would be the primary target audience because they are responsible for contributing the maximum sales revenue. Small level institutes would be the secondary target audience because they have fewer demands of stationery products (Solga, 2013).

The first step for an email marketing execution is to collect data of the target audience which the email addresses of the purchase managers. The data could be collected through various resources such as directories (online and offline), company’s database (filtering the earlier purchase made by any such institute), through telephone calling etc. Another option for the database is to purchase from the online sources. Once the database is ready then the next step is to design the template which would contain a message for the manager.

Campaign Objective

The objective of the campaign is to design an email marketing campaign using the concept of integrated marketing. The marketing plan has to very strategically designed to reach the target audience. Campaign uses email marketing as a channel because of its wide reach ability and instant user response. An email marketing campaign would be created using the consumer insight and applying the concept of branding and positioning. The idea is to reach the target audience through an effective marketing channel. The message of the campaign must be convincing enough so as to attract the customer and initiate a purchase (Wright, 2006).

Tilly’s Beginner Range: Strategic Approach

The main idea is of the campaign is to follow the 3R’s:

Reach: The idea is to reach the inbox of the purchase manager and convince them to open and read the message (McGhie, 2012).

Resonance: Once the manager opens the message to read it, he must be convinced by the idea and should start considering the option of making a purchase. The idea of a reasonable cost and a good quality stationery product would influence them to make an initiative towards an inquiry about the product (McGhie, 2012).

Reaction: A strong message would definitely convince the manager to make some initiative for a purchase. The initiatives could be making an inquiry related to the product cost, talking to the college authorities about the requirement of the product (McGhie, 2012).

Product positioning, brand image, inherent drama, product USP etc are often used in a campaign which creates a trust and confidence among its target audience.

Product positioning would help to create an image of the product in the minds of the customers and occupy a particular position in their minds related to the product. ‘Tilly’s Beginner Range’ is a new product segment which is especially launched for the art students. This is the main idea around which the whole campaign would revolve. The idea here is to position the brand in the minds of the target audience by influencing them that this is the perfect combination of art and craft stationery for the art students in terms of price and quality. This would help in product positioning of the brand in the minds of the target customers through its differentiation element (McGhie, 2012).

Brands image influences the minds of the customer and is responsible for building a trust and confidence among its customers. Apart from the prices, the manager must be able to recognize the brand to gain some trust and confidence regarding the purchase. A potential customer always looks for a brand name before making any purchase. An idea would have to be conveyed that the brand can be trusted. Tilly’s Beginner Range would occupy a particular position in the minds of the target audience and they would consider the brand whenever opting for a purchase of art and craft stationery products. Another option is to share the customer base of the company and showing the past results how the customers have been delighted by the purchase (McGhie, 2012).

Inherent drama is again a strategy to occupy a particular place in the minds of its customers through emphasizing the benefits of the purchase of the customers. The managers look for a complete package of art and craft stationery products at an affordable price without compromising the quality of the material. They are getting a great deal here at Tilly’s through its comprehensive product range which is especially designed for the students. Tilly’s Beginner Range provides a comprehensive range of art and craft stationery products for art students at very affordable prices with high quality art and craft supplies. The manager need not to wander here and there for every single product. Also, buying the products in bulk quantity would be very cost effective for the manager. Thus, the manager would be attracted towards such a lucrative deal where he is getting his entire requirement fulfilled (McGhie, 2012).

Consumer insights help in understanding the customer attitude, changing perceptions, loyalty, usage and the buying behavior. The campaign has to be designed by considering the consumer insights. Here, the end consumer is students, so the campaign must focus that how beneficial the product is for a student. The deal would be initiated by manager so it should be lucrative for the manager (Wright, 2006).

Pre-emptive Strategy

The pre-emptive strategy ensures that a proper tactic is used for the campaign to gain competitive advantage over the industry. The campaign idea Tilly’s Beginner Range would be a competitive edge over the other market players by differentiation element (McGhie, 2012).

Thus, the message of the campaign must be clear enough to highlight all the above elements which are requisite to attract the target audience.

The campaign thus must be able to occupy a particular position in the minds of its customers through inherent drama, positioning and creating a brand image.

Message Content

The message content is the key element of the campaign and would have to be created, structured and oriented in such a manner so as to attract the attention of the purchase manager. A purchase manager has a very busy schedule and he would hardly get a time to go through each and every email of his inbox. Therefore, his brain would apply a scan and filter procedure to go through the important emails so as to save his time. Thus, the content should be able to attract the attention among hundreds of emails in the inbox of the manager. The mail gets selected or rejected from its subject line, which must be visible among so many emails and gets through the pipeline of read emails. The subject would have to be of the manager’s interest so that it gets filtered through hundreds of emails. Consider the following subject which would be of an interest to the manager (Parsons, & Maclaran, 2009).

Following is the proposed content for the campaign:

Subject: Introducing great line of affordable and high quality art and craft stationery products for art students

Introducing ‘Tilly’s Beginner Range’, a perfect combination of art and craft stationery for the art students 

Get the right mix of stationery for all your needs from acrylic and oil colors to brushes and drawing board everything you need to spark creative learning.

Tilly’s art is launching its new range of products for art and craft stationery material. The products are affordable and high quality art and supplies and especially designed considering the needs and requirement of the college students.

Tilly’s Beginner Range offers a comprehensive range of art and craft stationery for art students:

• Artist Table Easel Stand
• Artist Tripod Easel Stand
• Cotton Stretched Canvas
• Wooden Drawing Board
• Oil and Acrylic Colors
• Brushes

It is clearly visible from the subject that it would create some interest in the mind of the manager if he is looking for some art and craft stationery for his college.

Moreover, social media links would also be attached such as facebook, twitter, google plus, pinterest etc to show the credibility of the products through user comments and reviews.

The style determines the appearance of the campaign. The style here is to show the benefits of the newly launched range of products especially for student segment. The benefits are emphasized in the message content of the email marketing so as to influence the mind of the reader and convince him to initiate a purchase (Parsons, & Maclaran, 2009).

The pictures are used in the message so as to grab the attention of the audience and divert their mind from other different issues to art and craft stationery products. This would create picture in the minds of the audience which may led to a comparison between the other market stationery products. The picture of easel and oil and acrylic colors signify that the range would cover all of these products. An art student painting a picture signifies that the complete range is especially designed for art students only (Parsons, & Maclaran, 2009).

Thus, the style of the message helps in positioning the product ‘Tilly’s Beginner Range’ in the minds of the target audience (Parsons, & Maclaran, 2009). tinct to read the complete message. For the same reason, the subject of the message clearly indicates that a new range of product is being launched for the students. The manager would be definitely attracted towards the subject line in order to explore the new range of products especially launched for the students (Mooij, 2010).

The engaging tone of the message clearly signifies that the product is especially designed for the students. The tone is formal and grabs the attention of the target audience through its content and layout.

Scheduling an Email Campaign

Once the email template is ready with a structured content and layout then comes another important step of scheduling the timings of campaign.

The study says that most of the office employees access their emails in the morning at 10 am or in the evening at 8 pm. The chances of getting an email accessed gets lower if the mail has been sent at a very odd timings, for instance at late night or middle in the afternoon. Therefore, it is really important to consider the schedule timings of an email marketing campaign very seriously. The campaign would be scheduled to begin at 10 am in the morning (Randazzo, 2016). Through the mailchimp software, it becomes easy to launch a campaign at the desired timings.

Recommendations

Email Marketing is being widely used for business promotions and is one of the most effective tools for an ad campaign. The campaign has effectively used email marketing for the campaign designed. From the report, it can be evaluated that following are the key elements to be considered while creating an email marketing campaign:

• Target audience must be very well segmented before initiating a campaign in order to get effective results of the campaign. The campaign has to be designed by considering the needs and requirement of its target audience. The data collected for email marketing must be fresh in order to get effective results.
• Consumer insights should be considered in order to design the campaign because it helps in understanding attitude, preferences, loyalty, usage and buying behavior of the customer (Mooij, 2010).
• Strategic approach would ensure that campaign has been based around a central idea and thus, would have a resonance affect on the minds of the customers through its centralized idea. The idea must be able to position the product very well in the minds of the customers through its design, presentation, layout, content, style, tone and structure (Paley, 2006).
• Message should be very well framed in email marketing in order to grab the attention of the target audience. In such a busy world, people do not have time to go through every email in the inbox and an advertisement usually gets deleted from the inbox. The subject line must ensure that that the email get opened and viewed by the audience. The content should be attractive by emphasizing on the benefits of the products for the audience through lucrative deals and offers. Product positioning, brand image and inherent drama helps in customer engagement through personalization and makes the customer feel special as if the product is created only for him (Mullen & Daniels, 2011).
• Scheduling email marketing campaign is very important because there are great chances of getting the message rejected or not even looked at. It must be ensured that a study is done on the timings of mail accessing for the target audience so that the mail get accessed and viewed at least (Mullen & Daniels, 2011).

Conclusion

An Integrated Marketing Plan has thus, been created to launch a campaign of a small medium business enterprise Tilly’s art and office supplies by considering the following key elements:

• The target audience is institutes and colleges of art, whose purchase is done by their purchase managers. Therefore, the campaign is designed by considering the requirement of a purchase manager so as to influence his mind.
• Tilly’s Beginner Range: The campaign idea. The central idea here is to manipulate the minds of the purchase manager and convince them to buy the products of Tilly’s. Tilly’s Beginners’s Range helps in product positioning and creating a brand image in the minds of the target audience.
• The message content is further designed in a manner so as to attract the target audience to read it.
• Finally, the campaign is scheduled by considering the timings at which the manager would access the email.

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