Many an online business has been made, or broken, by a single email marketing campaign. If you do it right it can go viral, driving massive traffic to your website. If you do it wrong, on the other hand, it can sink your company. Read this article in full to find tips and techniques to teach you how to do it in a way that benefits your company.
Be certain to only send your messages to those you actually know. Emailing people who don’t know your nor your products can seem like spam. People will not recognize your brand and will not trust you at all. They will just send your email to their spam folder, and it will be a huge waste of your time.
If you buy a list of emails to send to, check and make sure it is up to date. Sometimes lists for sail might match your target demographics but be woefully out of date. The number of addresses now defunct can be as high as 25% of the overall list.
Provide your customers with useful tips or information in each marketing newsletter. Think of the newsletter as an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise in your field. Your customers will trust you more when they see how much you know and will be more likely to buy products or services from you.
Do not send emails to random addresses or people who have not authorized you to do so. People consider emails that they didn’t sign up for as spam so they generally just throw these messages away and don’t bother reading them. It may even violate your ISP’s policy by doing so.
Always remember that you should be using email marketing to sell services and products. Your emails should bring readers a bit closer to actually buying. Share information on a brand new product, talk about how to use an older product or offer a special promotion.
Use your email marketing to get your customers more involved with other promotion portals. For example, always give readers several ways to learn more about what every email is discussing. End every email with your contact information and web address, encourage them to share special promotions through Facebook “Like” buttons or direct them to a video that shows them how best to use a new product.
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.
To get the best results from your email marketing campaign, test your messages thoroughly before you send them. Do not just type up a quick message and blast it out to your subscriber list without checking it carefully first. Preview it in different email programs and on different platforms to make sure it will display properly for everyone.
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.
Set up some expectations for your recipients when they sign up for your email campaign. Once they sign up, they should receive an immediate confirmation email that highlights what they can receive from signing up. This can help you build great customers relationships and help you avoid complaints from the recipients not being aware of what they were receiving.
Make sure your emails will grab your customers attention. Finding the right approach may take some experimentation. Make sure to evaluate what is working, and what is not. If it’s not working, change it. Even when things are working, keep evaluating them to determine how you can improve upon them.
Combining your email strategy with a social network strategy can net big returns. Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube can be great sites to interlink with. This makes it easy for customers to share with other people from their social network. More people will learn about your business and join your email list.
Offer incentives. People might be hesitant to give their consent to receive e-mails. Try offering some sort of incentive as a bonus for receiving e-mails from you. Offer coupons or exclusive promo codes. Make sure that there is content in these e-mails that they will find both worthwhile and useful.
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.
Make sure you have permission before emailing someone. Very few people like to be hassled with unsolicited messages in their inboxes. If you send emails that are unwanted, it can hurt you. Start off the right way, and be certain that your efforts are going to people who agree to hear from you.
When you know what to do, creating an email marketing campaign will be easy, effective and profitable. You’ll better your online reputation while building profits, and the initial investment of both time and money is small. There is no better way to grow your business, so start creating your campaign today!
