Do you have an online business that could use a boost? One easy solution is a business strategy called email marketing. Marketing through targeted emails to potential customers is a great way to get some extra visibility for your business. Read on to find out how you can start today!
To make sure your emails don’t turn people off, always seek permission before sending them out. Include a subscription button on your site, and encourage regular customers to have their friends sign up as well. If you’d like to give people some extra encouragement to subscribe, you could feature subscriber only deals.
To get people to opt-in and give permission for you to send email marketing messages to them, offer an incentive. Offer a discount or a coupon on one of your products or services. Include a whitepaper or newsletter about your niche or market. Give your prospect something in return for access to their inbox.
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.
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.
Try customizing your messages for your email recipients. Try including their name in the email so that it feels more warm and personal. This can help build better relationships with your customers, and they may be more inclined to read what you have to say in these personalized email messages.
Allow for conversation through your email marketing message campaign. Ask questions of your subscribers, or posit thought provoking queries. The responses will make your readers feel like they are part of a relationship instead of marketing targets. The responses you get will help you know where you are going right, and you might discover useful information about your base.
Rather than purchasing or renting a mailing list, build your own from the ground up. You can do this by including opt-in forms on your website, gathering business cards at conventions or other industry events, and encouraging your subscribers to share your emails with others, which can garner even more subscribers.
Make your emails concise. No one wants to read through a number of paragraphs when several would have sufficed. People don’t have much time these days, and you could become persona non grata in their email boxes if you don’t appreciate the time crunch that most people have to deal with these days.
Once you have the format of your email marketing messages set up, you should check it on multiple email clients. In the same way that different browsers can display web pages differently, a strange email client may show your message in an unexpected fashion. Make use of all of the popular free email clients and ensure that your message is going to appear properly on them.
To make sure you have covered everything in your email marketing plan, use multi-part messages. Including your message in both plain text and HTML format makes your emails readable to anyone. It may seem like extra work, but keeping subscribers makes it worth it in the long run. If you only use one delivery method, you could lose lots of potential readers.
Your customers will appreciate getting a freebie via email. Include a link in your email to your site, complete with instructions on how to access the free product or service. Encourage them to act swiftly by including a message regarding the available number of free offers.
Let your emails accurately reflect your brand. Though you may feel like email marketing is a bulk and generic product, you should put your all into it. Have the email format showcase your company, and your services, by proudly displaying your business logo with complimentary coloring throughout. Almost nobody uses plain text for marketing these days.
In terms of overall strategy, try to focus your email efforts on bringing together the perfect customer with the perfect product. Do not be afraid to specialize and customize, even it takes more effort. Build up information on your subscribers and narrow down what you offer them. Your goal is to present them with an offer they will find irresistible.
Be sure that all the links work in the messages you send out while email marketing. The email is useless if customers can’t get onto your website because of a broken link. It can also make your emails look less professional, as consumers know that professional emails should not contain errors.
With any email marketing campaign, you should utilize some type of tracking or analytic software. By tracking your campaigns, you can determine what was successful and what failed. By using a combination of post-click analytics, coupon codes and link tracking, you will gain information to help you tweak your next email campaign into one that has a higher success rate.
As you can see, email marketing is something that any business owner can use to great effect for their business. Applying the tips in this article to your marketing strategy will make some great improvements to your business right away! Try it now and see what a difference email marketing can make.
