If you think that email marketing is no longer an effective tool, you are mistaken! Although email solicitation was one of the Internet’s earliest marketing vectors, it is a long way from exhausted. There are always new ideas coming up to help make email marketing effective. Use these tips to make email marketing a fun and exciting venture for your business.
Follow up with contacts you meet at trade shows. Collect people’s phone numbers when they stop by your table and call them within a couple of weeks of meeting them. Use the follow-up call to check in with your contact and ask him if he would like to receive your marketing newsletter by email.
While online promotion is essential, don’t overlook the opportunity to promote your mailing list offline. To build both new subscribers and potential clients, look for any opportunity possible to get the word out. Some great opportunities to build your business can be found at networking events, trade shows, conferences and local gatherings.
Continue offering incentives to customers after they sign up for your email list. If they remain on your email list for a month, for example, give customers a 10 percent discount. This keeps customers from losing interest in your marketing materials and unsubscribing or deleting your emails after just a couple of newsletters.
Treat each reader like a relationship. Ask in the first email for permission to send more. In the second email, tell them what discounts, services and products they can expect in future emails. In the third email and after, follow through with the content you promised to provide them with.
When you are having your customers provide their email address to you during the sign-up process. Make sure that you have the clear disclaimer visible that you will be undertaking email marketing campaigns. Try to give the consumer an indication of how often you intend to make use of their addresses so that they are not unaware.
Make sure you have permission from the subscriber before you send them emails. If you spam them or send them anything they didn’t ask for, customers won’t take you seriously. In some cases, recipients will be so irritated that they could discontinue their relationship with you.
To make your emails look as professional as possible, invest a little thought in their design. Use a consistent layout, color scheme, and logo with all of your messages. This gives your subscribers the impression that they are hearing from a trustworthy, authoritative source. They will pay more attention and give your content more credence this way.
Make it easy to unsubscribe. Make the unsubscribe link clearly visible in your email, allowing someone to stop getting email marketing. This way you are less likely to get reported for sending spam. Also, if someone has unsubscribed, don’t make the mistake of continuing to send them email: that is likely to cause them to complain.
In all your emails, you need to use a call for action. Your recipients should know what they have to do in your emails by you telling them directly. Make it highly visible to them with instructions on what to do next if links are included. You may want to include these near the top, as well as the bottom, of your emails.
Build your own custom templates. Avoid just sending out generic emails, be creative with them. Try to get your messages to reflect aspects of your business’s branding, such as color palettes and fonts. Make sure you include a link to a plain text version so that those with images disabled can read your messages if you include any images.
The venerable marketing email still has plenty of life left in it, as you can see. The rewards and benefits of a well-organized email marketing campaign are significant and proven. You can enjoy some of those rewards yourself, by making use of the preceding tips!
