Those of us who’ve been in the email industry for a while — and even those who are brand new to the space — recognise the value of effective email marketing programmes. They are, compared with all traditional ATL (Above The Line) and BTL (Below The Line) media, quick to implement, quick to follow up, and highly cost-efficient; their success rates are extremely easy and accurate to measure; and campaigns can be tested and modified at the drop of a hat.

Of course, this hardly means your CFO is going to simply rubber stamp your budget proposal and send you away with a smile, a pat on the back and a salary raise. These days, marketing professionals live or die by ROI. You have to elaborate and present an end-to-end plan that makes sense from all angles. So here are some actionable steps you can take to promote your email marketing programme from within:

1. Prove the affordability and responsiveness of the channel. To prove email is affordable and responsive, first think about the goals of your programme and what they mean to the powers-that-be at your company. Are you trying to increase the number of online purchases or the total dollar amount per purchase? Is it more important to drive more clickthroughs to your web site? Or are you trying to ramp up subscriptions to your e-newsletters to gain more advertising revenue?

Whatever your reasons, keep them clearly in mind when preparing your numbers, and wherever possible define targets. And don’t be afraid to revisit old territory by showing a cost and success rate analysis compared with, for example, printed DM, too. By attaching numbers to your company’s strategic email marketing goals, you’ll help your executives see where the programme soars and where there are areas that strategic investment might help increase revenue.

2. Show your mastery of emailing regulations. Knowing the legalities surrounding email marketing is paramount to maintaining, and promoting, governance around your company’s email channel. Especially if you are responsible for a pan-Asia programme, you have to be aware of every country’s different legislation and regulations governing emails. For example, the Australia Spam Act requires all commercial emails to be opt-in, but places no further restriction on the email structure. Whereas in China all emails, irrespective of whether they are opt-in or opt-out (both are legitimate), which contain commercial advertising content are subject to a specific labelling rule so that consumers can identify them.

Also, disparate systems within the same company (still a relative commonplace in corporations where global IT empires struggle to integrate into a centrally managed network) can wreak havoc on an email programme as customers become confused by different communications from various domains and unrelated communications strategies. Bringing all of your data feeds into one place maintains your customers’ opt-in and opt-out requests and preferences, and ensures you have a handle on the programme — thereby enabling you to show the power of the channel.

3. Make yourself heard internally. Don’t be shy about reaching out to peers, superiors and other executives within your organisation to establish your knowledge and expertise in the email space. Show them how irrelevancy and inappropriate frequency can potentially drive a large part of your customer base to unsubscribe from email programmes, or worse still report your messages as SPAM. Also share with them other trends and statistics on email marketing from around the region and the globe.

Get to know and integrate with your web development team, IT department, communications and public relations departments, and business development teams to make sure email is integrated with all other channels across your company. The Global Consumer Email Study from ROI Research & Epsilon shows that nearly half of the consumers surveyed in Asia Pacific said email has already replaced postal promotional mail, bills/statements, telemarketing calls and in-person sales calls.

Evangelise and show them examples of programmes that have worked, then explain how and why. And don’t be frightened to show them examples of programmes that have failed, too. Demonstrate your mastery of the subject.

4. Listen, learn and teach. One of the best ways to promote your email programme internally is to show those around you that you’re listening to their goals, learning the most effective ways to help your team achieve those goals and teaching everyone all of your masterful email marketing knowledge. It never hurts to hold an internal email marketing business review to present the numbers and programmes to those who might not have as much understanding of what email should mean to them. Encourage open lines of communication with your internal teams, and share relevant articles and research. Work together with colleagues to build programmes, and proactively think of new ways to get your company’s message across via the email and online channels.

5. Test, test test! One of the great advantages of email marketing is that you can trial and monitor your programme easily. Internally, you can use this to show that your programme is much more nimble and flexible than most of your colleagues will be used to. Check your design and implementation against your key objectives and then try it out. Does the response match your requirement? If not, don’t try to convince yourself - or anyone else - that black is white and in fact everything is going to turn out right. Change it! Then test again. The mere fact that you can respond so fast to inputs is a convincer in its own right.

By keeping these five key steps in mind, you’ll be well on your way to successfully promoting and proving the value of your email programme to your company’s decision makers.