If you are running a successful business, you may have already used many of the marketing techniques out there. But if you haven’t used an email marketing campaign, you could be missing out on greater success. Here are some effective ways to market your business through email, so you can leave no stone unturned in your quest for excellence.
Always seek permission before sending marketing emails to potential customers. Sending unsolicited emails will quickly have you labeled a spammer. Getting permission to send your messages doesn’t have to be hard; offer something valuable to your customers in exchange for the ability to email them, such as a discount, coupon, or other sign-up incentive.
Keep your content current and variable; do not just repeatedly send out the same five messages repeatedly. If you want to keep people’s attention, there needs to be something fresh, or their attention will go elsewhere. If they wanted round the clock commercials, they would just stay at home watching home shopping channels. Even if some of them do that, give them something different when they check their inbox.
Only send email to customers after they have agreed to receive your mailings. People will generally view unwanted emails as spam and will ignore them or delete them without reading them. Violating your ISP or web host’s policies can lead to major catastrophe.
If you have images or graphics, put them on the left side of the email message. Make sure that your call to action element is always on this side. Research has documented that this location produces almost double the number of clicks to your product, service or website than placing these elements anywhere else does.
Avoid sending more than one marketing email per week. Remember that your readers probably get a lot of emails everyday. If you send too many messages, your customers may just tune out your messages and only read the messages they deem important (and marketing messages are never deemed important).
An email marketing campaign needs a design and testing phase, just like anything else. Plan on putting in time making sure that your messages get past all techniques used for fighting spam, from content filters to image blocking and java-script suppression. You can send out a million messages blindly and not ever know if they are even seen.
Try following up with a product review when sending a follow-up email to your clients. You could insert a link onto your email that informs them to enroll by clicking on this link. The ending P.S. on the message could urge them to take advantage of this opportunity that you are providing them.
Use tools to measure the success of your email marketing campaign. You should learn all you can about how many times your emails are read, if your subject lines are being read, which articles you write are being read, etc. Using information like this can help with the future success of your campaign since you will know what works and what does not.
Test sending your email marketing on different days of the week and at various times during the day. You’ll find that different times and dates will increase or decrease your open rates to your emails. Note the best time/day of the week mixtures and plan your most important email marketing campaigns to be released during those windows.
You should try and build an email list the best that you can from networking in person as well as on the Internet. You should not buy or rent lists of names that you will email to drum up business. There is no guarantee that any of the people you contact will be interested and you may even end up getting reported to your email service provider.
When developing an email marketing campaign, you must make your material look professional. If it does not look professional, customers will pass over it without paying any attention at all. There are plenty of scams and junk emails going around, and your legitimate marketing campaign must stand out as something they want to look further into.
Always keep your reputation in mind as you plan your email marketing strategy. Never take shortcuts, aim for the wrong audience or use any kind of deception. The character of your business is at stake, so you must always make sure you keep this in mind.
All images included in the messages should be tagged with Alt data. If the image does not load, the Alt tag will be helpful. The tag should appropriately describe the missing image. Make sure you include tags in your links.
There is nothing wrong with composing your marketing emails in HTML, but you may find it rewarding to give it a break from time to time. A simple message composed in plain text will be taken as a little more intimate and a little less formal by your subscribers. If you exercise moderation, sending plain text emails can encourage loyalty and draw your readers closer to you.
You might want to consider following up to your clients by sending a follow-up email that includes a bad link correction. Attach a request on your email that says to read this. The ending postscript could inform them that they can get a sneak peak by clicking on the provided link.
Keep your email content fresh. Don’t start repeating old information or re-using anything that you have previously written about in your emails. Your readers know when you’ve already said something and when you’re out of ideas. Furthermore, if you notice that something in your emails, like templates, images, etc. just aren’t garnering attention anymore, don’t fear changing things around.
Being the best means using all the tools and methods available to you to build your company. If you use the tips laid out in this article, you have a good chance of being the best. Make sure to use these to craft an email marketing campaign you can be proud of.
