Posts Tagged ‘Effective Email Marketing’
Before the super fast days of the Internet, marketing plans had to incorporate a few set tools and techniques. An organization or business owner could place ads in newspapers, on radio, television, or even on billboards. They could do large direct mailings and they could use the telephone to connect with potential customers. All of this cost a lot of money and if no system for tracking results was in place, it could also be a huge waste of funds as well.
Today however there are many tools available for effective marketing, and also many ways to track results. One of the most potent and immediate approaches to a wide pool of potential customers is through eMail Marketing. It costs very little to create, provides instant results and can be targeted to an established group of confirmed customers or interested parties as well as broadcast to a purchased list of addresses.
Unfortunately, unscrupulous businesses and organizations have abused email marketing to the point that many people try to filter it out of their email boxes. This can be overcome by using a few different approaches, and one of the best is through a dedicated email marketing service. The best companies are able to deliver their messages to the vast majority of ISPs in the world because they are not formatted to the same low standards as the traditional “spam” that is undesirable.
What is an email marketing service? They are companies that provide the professional tools to help groups and businesses craft the strongest, most effective email marketing campaigns possible. They do this by supplying their clients with easy to use templates that require only “point and click” skills and a bit of typing. What these templates create are highly professional emails that look like the product of a major marketing or advertising firm and not something from a significantly smaller venue or business.
Additionally they increase their incredible value to a marketing campaign by providing the capability of inserting surveys and high-quality custom images into the email marketing materials. This can directly connect a company to their clients or potential clients by allowing for feedback and response. Many email marketing services also provide tracking and reporting which can help to keep email lists clean and free of uninterested or nonexistent names.
How do I select an email marketing service? The features to look for are ease of use, which means templates and no HTML, coding, graphic design or other skills needed for the user to create their materials. The service should be able to provide statistics about their success rate with the ISPs on the Internet, which means they should be able to provide the percentage of emails the customer can anticipate reaching email addresses. Affordability is key to the choice and this means that the service should ask for only a monthly rate with no additional fees tacked on top of it.
There are many reliable agencies offering support for email marketing and it is a proven approach to reliable and immediate results.
Jana Torres
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/connect-with-email-marketing-751522.html
It reaches the target audience, bypassing intermediaries. It is very personal, as the decision-maker, the one who decides to buy, gets to know you as a seller, and vice versa. It is virtually free and it is fast too.
Its spread is wide in that you can reach, at once, any number of buyers looking for your product or service. Best of all, eMail Marketing allows you to be in constant touch with your customers for receiving feedback, for improving your sales as well as for modifying your email marketing strategies without much time loss.
Sounds great, but it can appear much more different when you realize that you have to outdo your innumerable competitors in order to achieve success in your business. For this, you have to devise effective email marketing strategies. Remember that what works for others may or may not work for you. But there are some basic principles all follow in promoting their businesses.
Finding out who your target audience is, making an initial small subscriber list, determining when and how often you wish to send emails, identifying your major promotional goals, sending a few test emails and analyzing the results for future adoption or modification are usually considered to be important. But what is cardinal for the success of your business is the design of the email itself.
What to include in your emails?
The subject and the very first line of your email will make or break your customer- relationship. Make them short, simple and seductive. People are tempted to open emails only when the subject line holds enough punch. Emails, like skirts, should be long enough to cover the essentials and short enough to be interesting.
Long and boring emails probably have not the desired effect. While a brief introduction to you and your products and services will be welcome, what actually rivets the attention of readers is your focus on customer benefits. A small incentive or discount to the first few customers may be offered, for instance. Or, offer useful information that interests the reader.
If you have several points to make, instead of running them in a single paragraph, present them one by one highlighting them with bullets. Graphics and photos will definitely embellish your email and attract the customer attention. Incorporating links to your website pages in the email is like providing a life line for your business. Your sales presentation, to give an example, can be done by drawing the customer to your website through a link in the email. It is preferable to provide direct links to your website pages where the customer can readily find the listings of your products and services rather than give a link to your home page.
Keep it simple
The basic principle is to make everything as easy as possible for the customer to get hooked to your business proposition. Also, put in place a privacy policy that assures your customers that their personal information will not be revealed, sold or misused. Despite your best efforts, however, if the customer would want to unsubscribe, give him the facility. Finally, include all possible contact information along with your signature: name and address, telephone number, email address, fax number etc.
You may consider using an email marketing software package for managing your website and email lists. This type of software automatically organizes large email lists, subscribes website visitors, deletes unsubscribed persons, responds to emails and does many other things that make your email marketing management very convenient. Shop around for software to find one that meets your needs.
The success of your business through email marketing strategies depends on your reliability and consistency as much as on the unique utility of your product or service.
Juhani Tontti
http://www.articlesbase.com/email-articles/email-marketing-strategies-for-the-successful-business-95825.html
Email marketing software can be a very effective tool in your marketing arsenal. It is cost effective and will often produce a greater ROI than your traditional marketing channels. This is because with email marketing program, you are in total control. You decide what gets said, when it gets said, and to whom it gets said. Then, you can track everything down to the smallest detail. By having total control, with lots of information at your fingertips, you can constantly refine your tactics to become an even better email marketer.
For those who are just starting out with email marketing software and don’t yet have past email marketing software campaigns to rely on for information and guidance, there is a tried, tested and true formula you can follow.
This three-part formula works really well for retailers/e-tailers, but can be applied to any industry.
Part 1: Who Are You? What’s Happening? Start The Conversation…
The first part of your email should be about you. Obviously, your recipients will already know who you are, since they gave you permission to contact them, so this may sound a bit redundant. But, think of this as the “Hi, how are you?” part of the email. In this first section of your email marketing software campaign, you are really starting the conversation. You don’t want to just slap someone in the face with your offer. You’ve got to work your way into that. So, instead, you can start off by telling them something exciting that has happened at your organization, something new you are releasing, an award you received, some recent media coverage, or anything else you can think of.
You definitely don’t want this section to be too long and you do want to try to make it captivating. If you’re opening line is “we recently painted the walls a new shade of blue and watched it dry for the past 3 days” then you probably need to give it some more thought. Try to imagine that a friend came up to you and asked “What’s new at work?” The first two things that pop into your head are probably good candidates for this first section of your email marketing software campaign.
Part 2: What Are You Offering? What Are You Promoting?
Now it’s time for what you, as the business owner or marketing manager, probably deem the most important part of the message. In this second section you should present your readers with the specific ‘offer’ or ‘promotion’ you are featuring in this eMail Marketing software campaign.
It is best to only pick one or two things to promote or offer in each email. All too often people get excited about creating their email marketing software campaigns and cram a ton of offers into each email. The end result of this is that it dilutes the amount of focus each specific offer gets. You are much better off exercising some self-restraint, picking just one or two things to focus on, and only including those. Remember, you can always save the other offers for future email marketing software campaigns.
Once you’ve picked what you are going to offer or promote in your email marketing software campaign, be sure to write some compelling ad copy. Remember to think of your audience as you write this text. Think about how they will use the product or service you are promoting. It is often best to be ’solution focused’ as opposed to ‘feature focused’. This means your text should answer the question of how this product/service will benefit your reader, as opposed to the core features of the product/service. It is fine to include some features, but focusing on how it will benefit your reader will make it a lot more captivating and lead to a greater ROI for your email marketing software campaign.
Part 3: What Do You Want Them To Do Next?
This is an important part of your email marketing software campaign, although often times it goes overlooked. You may think this is implied or totally obvious, but explicitly telling your email marketing software recipient what you want them to do next will lead to much higher conversions.
Do you want your reader to click a link to buy something on your website?
Do you want your reader to reply back to you and request more information?
Do you want your reader to phone you to discuss the offer?
It is important to know exactly what your end-goal is otherwise you can’t measure the success properly.
Once you know what it is you want to achieve, then you can make sure you place it explicitly in your email. For example, if you want people to go to your website, put a big button or link that brings them to your site. (Tip: Don’t just link people to the homepage of your website, link them to a page related to your offer, ideally where they can make a purchase online.) If you want to get people calling you, put your phone number in big bold letters and tell people right in the email to call you. This is known as a ‘call to action’ and while you may think it is the logical next step for your reader, by doing a little hand-holding you will get a better response.
By including these 3 parts in your email, your email marketing software efforts will get off to a great start. Of course, as you gain more experience you will be able to modify your emails to better suit your specific audience. But, even as you move forward with your email marketing program, if you keep these three parts in mind, you will put yourself in the best position to achieve great success.
Rudy Barell
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/creating-an-effective-email-marketing-software-campaign-1209034.html