Email can be a highly effective way to market your business, but you need to know how to make your messages stand out from the millions of others that are sent every day. In the following article, you will learn how to cut through this barrage of spam and grab people’s attention.
Consider using a template that allows for each recipient to receive a personalized message in the greeting. People respond more favorably to emails that address them personally, and are less likely to reject the message. This personalization is simple to accomplish, and will grow a greater relationship with your customers.
Steer clear of renting or purchasing lists to pad your email marketing database. Not only do you not know if the emails you have purchased are truly your target market, but the lists can actually hurt your deliver-ability rates and ultimately your reputation. As much as possible, build your list organically.
Follow up with contacts you meet at trade shows. Collect people’s phone numbers when they stop by your table and call them within a couple of weeks of meeting them. Use the follow-up call to check in with your contact and ask him if he would like to receive your marketing newsletter by email.
Make sure your emails are consistent with any branding you have done. You should be including your company colors, logos and anything else unique to your business in your emails. Customers should be able to recognize your emails when they arrive in their in-boxes so that they are not automatically deleted.
Beware of including attachments to your email marketing! Mass emails with attachments are instantly suspected as spam by most spam filters. As well, these days many types of computer malware and viruses are carried in email attachments, and people are aware of this. Your email is in jeopardy of being immediately deleted when they see an attachment without even being read.
Give your marketing emails the same consideration that you give your site content and other marketing materials. Too often businesses take a too-casual approach to their email marketing efforts, and seemingly small errors like typos end up undermining their readers’ perception of their level of professionalism. Before you add an email to your marketing rotation, ask yourself if it would inspire you to buy.
You want every email campaign to have feedback that is passive as well as active. Active feedback can be gained by asking your readers for suggestions. Readers generally aren’t even aware of passive feedback, on the other hand. Passive feedback involves the use of various tools that show you which links are being clicked on most often, and which pages are getting the most response from your site visitors.
Make it easy to unsubscribe. Make the unsubscribe link clearly visible in your email, allowing someone to stop getting email marketing. This way you are less likely to get reported for sending spam. Also, if someone has unsubscribed, don’t make the mistake of continuing to send them email: that is likely to cause them to complain.
Everyone knows that email filters are getting more and more strict. Graphics and other things included in emails are blocked out, so a reader might not even see what you are trying to say. Therefore, a good piece of advice is to use plain text with a hyperlink to your site.
For maximum accessibility, send your email marketing messages as multipart format. Any email clients that support HTML or have it user-enabled will show your content in HTML format. However, if someone receives your email and only allows text content, that is what they will see. Doing this allows everyone to see your message, regardless of their client or settings.
Write your email marketing campaign content for human beings, not software. If the text is authentically intended for human reading, you do not need to worry about spam filters eating your messages alive. Do not get cute or overly creative with your vocabulary in an attempt to avoid spam filtration.
The subject is one of the most important parts of your e-mail. If you do not have a subject that immediately grabs the reader’s attention, it is likely that they will not bother to read the e-mail at all. The best written e-mails can be completely worthless without a compelling subject. Make sure that all of your subjects are great!
Make sure your subscribers know what they are getting into when they sign up for your email marketing campaign. Setting expectations is highly important to the success of your campaign. You can have many people sign up, but with the wrong expectations, you end up just disappointing many people and losing customers.
When following up with clients, you could send a follow-up email to them with a message that confirms their interest in one of your products or services. You could include a link that says to watch it. The ending of the message could include another link that allows them to add your product or service to their cart.
Write your message copy with benefits in mind, but not yours. Make sure your messages reflect the benefits that your content, products or services are offering your subscribers and readers. They want to know what is in it for them before they commit to the call to action, which is where your benefit happens.
Try using holidays and important events to your advantage in your email marketing campaigns. For instance, if it’s Valentine’s Day, try incorporating things like candy, flowers, hearts and other related imagery or designs. Your readers should enjoy the creativity and festiveness of your messages around special times of the year.
Making effective use of email to promote your business can be tricky, but it is easier once you know what you are doing. Done properly, email marketing can dramatically boost your visibility. Make good use of the tips and techniques you have learned from this article to bring more customers to your business.
