A carefully crafted email marketing campaign can build a large and loyal customer base. The trick is to know what your customers want and how to deliver it. This article was designed to help you create an email marketing campaign that will be effective for your business and will be pleasing to your customer.
Do not send emails that were unsolicited. If you are emailing people who don’t wish to be on your mailing list, they will most likely delete your emails. Your IP address could be blacklisted if there are complaints of spam and it could also give your business a bad rap.
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.
Maximize the results of your email marketing by encouraging your readers to respond to every email. Always read and reply to these emails immediately. Building a personal relationship with each of your readers is the best way to convert them into loyal customers. This is also a good way to get more specific feedback on the success of your efforts.
To make a clear and memorable impact with every email, keep your marketing messages short and sweet. Every email should have a very clear message and should only include information, media and links that are completely relevant to that message. A succinct but convincing email will be easier for your readers to absorb than a windy message that tries to force too many points.
Find out who your competitors are and sign up to their emails. You will be able to see what content, they are sending to their subscribers and figure out what aspects to use and which to stay away from. Just be sure not to steal their content, as this could constitute plagiarism.
In addition to using email marketing, incorporate SMS marketing into your campaign. Have customers sign up for an SMS option and send them text messages when on the go. When these two methods are used together, you have a better chance of getting more customers to sign up for your product.
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.
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 may find that it is a good idea to devote a small portion of every marketing email you send out to briefly reviewing what your subscribers can expect from you. By demonstrating that you have a plan for your emails and you are sticking to it, you can encourage your readers’ trust and make them less likely to grow tired of your messages.
It’s extremely important to send your marketing emails with a personalized touch. You can do more than just putting the recipient’s name on a standardized message. You must mine the data you have on each subscriber for information you can use. Mine the information about your subscribers. Break them down into smaller buckets based off of similar profiling, and customize your messaging based off of that profiling.
Keep in mind that you are developing a reputation as you utilize email marketing. Don’t take any shortcuts, mislead people or target the wrong demographic. Remember, your company reputation is at stake. Always make choices when it comes to email marketing with that in mind.
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.
Craft compelling, efficient subject lines. A subject line that is less than 60 characters long is more likely to be noticed by a reader and is more likely to be opened than a message with a lengthy subject line. Keep in mind that longer subjects will be truncated, so keep your most important information at the start of the subject.
Build your mailing list one person at a time. Start by asking your largest customers to sign up and recommend you to their friends. Word of mouth is the best form of recommendation and you will gain much more business this way as well as have a larger, targeted email list to market your products to.
It has already been noted that the key to a successful email marketing campaign is to know what your customer wants and what your business needs. An effective marketing plan is not just luck; it has to be carefully crafted. Use the information in this article to help you design an email marketing plan that works for everyone.