Although email marketing is not a brand new strategy, it is still a powerful and often overlooked tool for building and retaining your customer base. Marketing through email was among the earliest marketing strategies available over the Internet, and it is far from obsolete. The infusion of new strategies ensures that email marketing campaigns remain on the cutting edge of technology. Read the following tips and make your email marketing work for you.
Even though it should be obvious, it is important enough to state over and over: Never send unsolicited emails. You should have explicit permission from everyone you send marketing emails to. This is about more than trying not to upset them; a recipient who considers your email spam can cause trouble for you with your service provider.
Your email marketing campaign will be more effective if you make it easy for customers to unsubscribe. This may seem paradoxical, but people will tend to trust you more if you make them feel as if they are in control. Post the unsubscribe link in an obvious place so they can find it easily.
Post a version of your newsletter with graphics and animation on your website. Then send your email list a plain text version of the newsletter with a link to the web version. This keeps your emails simple enough to stop them from being diverted to the spam folder as well as encouraging your customers to visit your website.
Your email marketing efforts will give you the best results when you coordinate them with the rest of your marketing campaign. Do not work against yourself by unnecessarily duplicating your efforts in several different marketing channels. Make sure that your use of email, social media, and traditional venues are all designed to work well together.
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.
Color is important, even when it comes to email! Your email messages should have a consistent color scheme that is both professional and easy to read. This is especially important once you start designing more advanced, HTML rich messages. If you are unsure about making your own selections, a little Internet research can point you towards excellent color schemes.
Do not restrict yourself just to email marketing. As you identify your core clientele that trusts you, see if you can get phone numbers and physical addresses. Build on your relationships by expanding your communications with your loyal core base by contacting them through these mediums as well as email.
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.
Consider following up with a rumor that a sale is about to end. Insert a statement that tells your clients to subscribe immediately so that they can take advantage of this sale. The closing of the email could tell them not to miss out on this incredible opportunity and to act now.
Put real consideration into where you place links in your marketing newsletters. For example, you don’t want to send readers away from your email before you give them their call to action. You also don’t want to put your priority links at the end of an email where they may be overlooked.
It is significantly more effective to build your own e-mail list for e-mail marketing than to purchase a list, or acquire the services of a marketing company that has their own lists. The reason for this is that everyone who submits their e-mail address to be a part of your list is interested in the services or products that you have to offer. These people are far more likely to be receptive to your e-mail.
When someone subscribes to your email marketing list, confirm that this is what they really intended to do. Implementing this double opt-in strategy will make it much less likely that your email provider will receive spam complaints about you. Also, you will be assured that the people receiving your emails are actually interested in what you are sending them.
It is very important to pay attention to when you send your e-mails. If you send them in the middle of the night or very early in the morning, some of your recipients might simply delete your e-mail when they wake up along with the rest of their junk mail. Utilize tracking tools to determine the ideal time to send your e-mails.
If one of your customers is not happy with your products or services, you could send a follow-up email to this person that apologizes to them. Include a link on the email that tells this person to click on it in order to listen to the apology with their own ears. The concluding postscript could inform them that they can get a free sample by clicking on the provided link.
There is still life left in email marketing. Heed the advice in this article and continue searching for ways to present an innovative and effective email marketing campaign to your customers.
