Do you already run successful mailing campaigns within your local market? That’s great! Then you have the basics covered and are ready to head out onto the deep water and start marketing through email abroad. However, you should keep in mind that mailing campaigns on the international market may differ from those carried out in your country. You must therefore adjust your marketing communication strategy accordingly. How to do it? What do you need to think about? You will learn about it in the article below!
The legal regulations
Before you start tailoring your mailing campaigns to specific countries, you should pay attention to a very important aspect – the legal regulations. It is extremely important that your campaigns and all promotions comply with the regulations existent in given country. Pay attention to aspects such as: processing of personal data, rules on obtaining databases, policy regarding the use of cookies and issues regarding the possibility of unsubscribing from receiving commercial information from your company. Before you move on to adjusting your mailing campaigns to the international markets, you must start by making sure that all your actions are in accordance the law!
The language
If you are planning on running mailing campaigns abroad, it is obvious that you need to adapt the language to a given country. But it’s not just about using English in the US or German in Germany. It is also important to adjust the way of using of the language to the character of the country. In some places, relatively light and informal messages will be better perceived, while in others they will need to be slightly more serious. In one country it is worth using more extensive messages that contain storytelling, and in other countries very short and concise emails will be more desirable. It is also worth remembering that not only the mail itself should be written in the appropriate language. You should also take care of customization the possibilities of contacting you or even translate the subpage concerning unsubscribing from receiving such commercial information.
The content of email
The content of the message is closely related to the language adjustment mentioned above. However, the content of the message is not just words. It is also all photos, graphics or video clips that are sent to your recipients. The method of such communication may vary significantly in different parts of the world. This, because it is influenced by the local market, which has accustomed its recipients to a specific style of communication. That is why it is so important that, before starting a foreign mailing campaign, you carry out appropriate research, look carefully at the methods of communication in each country and the rules that are applied there. Remember that improper adjustment of words, graphics or even colours may carry a different message than you planned for and significantly affect the perception of your brand in a given country.
The customer groups
When carrying out mailing campaigns in your own country, you most likely group the clients. But how to approach such segmentation in the case of international markets? Actually, you can use many of the methods of grouping your recipients that you use on the local market. It is also worth paying attention to segmentation according to the location of residence, used language or cultural circumstances. Thanks to this, the given target group will receive only personalized content that is of importance just for them.
The timing of promotion
The timing of a promotion plays a huge role – both in television as well as in internet marketing. Actually, you can reach more people during some specific hours, so it is worth adjusting the time of the publication of your content, that is – of sending emails. By adjusting the communication time well, you can influence a higher rate of opening your emails. Therefore, it is worth using tools that will adapt the sending time to, for example, the appropriate time zone. Such tools also allow you to adjust the sending out time based on historical data, such as time frames of when a given group of customers most often opens and reads e-mails.
The cultural conditions
When planning any kind of marketing campaigns on international markets, you cannot forget about the cultural conditions. They will of course differ depending on the country but are extremely important when building a positive image of your brand among a given group of recipients. It is worth preparing a good research on the culture of a given country in order to adapt your messages well or even in order to avoid offending someone with your messages. Sometimes a message that seems appropriate to you can be interpreted differently in different parts of the world, which is why it is so important to take care of this aspect. It is also worth including all customs and local holidays in your marketing strategy.
If you want to conduct mailing campaigns on the international market, you must not forget that the entire marketing strategy must be tailored to the specificity of the market. Everything must be matched in terms of the recipients’ way of thinking, or the ways of communication they are used to. It is no doubt that such campaigns will be more difficult to implement abroad, because you know your local market well, but each new one requires good familiarity with it. However, if you prepare well for such a mailing campaign, nothing prevents you from achieving success on the world-wide market!