Everyone knows that in order to have a successful business, it’s important to employ good marketing strategies. While there are many ways to market your products, email marketing is a great way to utilize the internet and reach an unlimited target market. Read on to discover ways to use email marketing in your business.
Minimize traditional email marketing activities during the holidays. Customers are preoccupied with family and friends, and are less likely to be paying attention to business email. Your odds of ending up in the spam box are considerably higher, which could have longer term implications for your bottom line. The major exception to this would be a business directly related to the holiday activities. Otherwise, give yourself a break and enjoy some downtime yourself. Business will be back on track in a day or two.
If you want your email marketing messages to be successful, make sure you have permission to send them. If you do not have permission from your recipients, the potential consequences can range from being added to spam filters all the way up to getting blacklisted by Internet service providers themselves.
To get people to opt-in and give permission for you to send email marketing messages to them, offer an incentive. Offer a discount or a coupon on one of your products or services. Include a whitepaper or newsletter about your niche or market. Give your prospect something in return for access to their inbox.
Ask your customers for feedback on your emails. Since your customers are the most important part of your campaign, it is important to know if they are pleased with the emails they receive from you. You could ask them to fill out a short survey with a few questions on what they like and what they dislike.
Treat each reader like a relationship. Ask in the first email for permission to send more. In the second email, tell them what discounts, products and services they can expect in future emails. In the third email and after, follow through with the content you promised to provide them with.
You want to make certain your emails are rich in content by putting in helpful information and not just making it into a sale’s pitch. Include articles and information for your subscribers which is not available on your website. Also include offers which are exclusive for your products or services. Be prepared to offer holiday or birthday greetings, and other special communications, that don’t always appear to be eliciting a purchase.
While you want to use your email marketing to improve your sales. The only way to get potential customers to read your emails is to convince them that they have value. To do this, your emails should always contain concrete, useful information and relevant links, and not just generic sales fluff.
Be sure that your landing page lives up to the customer’s expectations. The subscriber is obviously interested in your product if they have clicked on the link in your email. You do not want them to be disappointed by clicking on the link, and finding the page to be other than what they thought it would be.
If you want your email marketing messages to flow out across the Internet to people’s inboxes, consider where you are sending them from. Sent frequently from known and stable IP addresses is best. Sudden surges from new IP locations can raise suspicions and even result in blocks and blacklists from ISP’s.
Consider using text emails instead of graphically intense HTML emails for your campaign. You may be thinking that the graphics will engage your reader more, but it’s usually not the case. Many people today have trained themselves to delete emails with lots of imagery, assuming they are spam. As well, those images often trigger spam filters, meaning your message is never received by some people on your email list!
You should send your emails as a plain text every once in a while instead of always sending them in HTML format. This gives things a more personal touch and helps the subscriber feel that you are trying to connect. Do not use it too much though because then you may be seen as being too unprofessional.
Pay attention to the demographics within your subscriber base. See what content and links intrigued a particular segment of your audience, and then follow up with a new email to that subgroup. The boost in your response rate from peeling away the top layer will really surprise you, but in a delightful way.
To improve your email reading rates, offer subscribers the option of seeing your newsletters in either plain text or HTML. Too many companies send their emails out in only one format, discouraging their less tech-savvy readers or alternately disappointing readers that expect a more dynamic presentation. Offering every newsletter in both formats makes it more accessible.
You should make sure you are adding correct email addresses to your list. You don’t want to waste precious time hunting down addresses and resending e-mails after getting dozens of bounced back messages from invalid addresses. It’s a waste of time.
To maximize the effectiveness of your emails, send them out on Tuesday or Wednesday. Research shows that people are actually more inclined to respond positively to various forms of communication on these days, including email. Not only are they more likely to read your email, but they’re also more apt to click on buttons or links, which means that you’re more likely to see an increase in sales. Send your emails at mid-afternoon for optimal results.
As you can see, email marketing can be an effective marketing method for any business when used properly. By utilizing the internet, you are reaching countless potential customers outside of your local area. Use the tips above to kick-start your email marketing campaign and begin turning a profit in your business.
