Saturday, 6 April 2013

Useful Techniques To Apply To Your Next Email Marketing Campaign

By Jeffie Ahlm


Marketing your business is a big job. You need to have techniques and methods that allow you to target your customers and clients in a way that fires them up for what you have to offer. Email marketing can be an excellent tool for your marketing strategy if you know how to use it. Here are some good tips to get you going.

Form a personal relationship with your email service provider, also known as your ESP. Talk to them on the phone, and meet them face to face if possible. Email is their industry, and they know what does and does not work. Let them get to know you and your ambitions, and they can open doors for you.

A good business person knows when to close the deal. Nothing is worse than having all the right tools but closing the deal at the wrong time. You must know when to make an offer, and you must earn the right to make that offer. Making the offer at the wrong time will be detrimental to the success of your email marketing campaign.

Take timing into consideration as to when your messages are sent. Try and time your messages for when readers are likely to be reading. For consumers, this is probably evenings and weekends. For business clientele, weekday mornings are more ideal. Emails sent in off hours can get buried further down in inboxes than will likely get attention if someone is deleting a bunch of messages at once. Do not forget about time zone differences either.

Make sure the links from your email messages to your site are absolute URLs, not relative ones. Email messages and relative URLs don't work well together. If your emails include relative URL links, your customers won't make it to your site, and therefore won't be able to read it or buy your products.

Take every opportunity that comes up to be festive when you send out your emails. When there is a holiday try to tailor your emails to fit the occasion. Subscribers will be very appreciative of this, and they will feel as if you are human and not a robot. Offering holiday discounts is another great idea that ties into the festive theme.

Your marketing email does not need to be just black and white only. Your logo should appear, and a color scheme of some sort should also be part of your campaign. However, it is very important that the color scheme be specific and consistent in order for it to be effective for your campaign.

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.

Keep your important aspects of your messages "above the fold." This "fold" refers to the area that is previewed in an email program. Anything that is important should be arranged with this "fold" in mind. Many readers use these to preview a message before deciding to open it. Keep anything important within this area so that they don't have to scroll to find it.

Slowly build your contact list. Start with those who have already appreciated what you offer and then move on to areas where you can engage your prospects. It can take a while to pick whom should be receiving your emails, but it'll be worth it in the end to build a reliable contact list.

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.

Use your readers to get content for your emails. When your readers ask you question, it makes great fodder for a future email. Answering reader questions in newsletters in this fashion also makes your customers feel more important, because you dedicate part of your newsletter just to them. You can use a traditional Q & A format, or simply state that a user asked you that question and give the answer.

Use other contact mediums besides email. Email is highly effective in garnering business, but there is so much more you can do. Ask your list for their home addresses and cellphone numbers, too. Ask them if they want to receive texts. Different people like different forms of contact and knowing their preferences will enable you to utilize the one that will be most well received.

Keep your messages simple and to the point when using email marketing. People are very busy and do not have time to read through more than a couple paragraphs to figure out what you are trying to say. Condense your message to a few short paragraphs, and stay focused on your main message.

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.

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.

Create familiarity with your email messages. Use your logo or come up with a specific style whenever you send out emails to your subscribers. This reassures them that the email is from your company and they will look forward to reading it. If you vary your messages your consumers might get confused when they open it up.

Due to its speed and simplicity, the email is a great invention that allows people to communicate with little time or effort. Thanks to these attributes, emails have unlimited marketing potential. Hopefully, you will keep the advice from this article in mind so that you can use email marketing in the most effective manner.




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