Email can be a highly effective way to market your business, but you need to know how to make your messages stand out from the millions of others that are sent every day. In the following article, you will learn how to cut through this barrage of spam and grab people’s attention.
Steer clear of renting or purchasing lists to pad your email marketing database. Not only do you not know if the emails you have purchased are truly your target market, but the lists can actually hurt your deliverability rates and ultimately your reputation. As much as possible, build your list organically.
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.
Make your customers anticipate the arrival of your newsletter in their email by using it to offer them exclusive specials and markdowns. This form of email marketing not only gives your readers a real value for their participation but also encourages them to refer friends. Indeed, a referral program can be a good method to grow your customer base and subscriber list.
To get the most of your email marketing, invest in a program that personalizes your emails with every customer’s given name instead of a generic greeting. Ensuring that every email starts with the recipient’s name is key to encouraging your customers to see your newsletters as valuable information and not just more sales spam.
Avoid sending out important marketing messages too close to major holidays. People do not have time to check their emails as much since they are away from work and have limited access to their computers. This is not a hard rule and some holidays will require communication. Some examples of this are occasion-specific campaigns such as Black Friday specials.
With any email marketing materials, limit the use of graphics. Graphics can take a long time to load which may discourage some users from viewing the e-mail. As well, emails that are heavily laden with graphics are often seen as junk or spam mail by email programs, meaning your email could land in a junk folder very easily.
An email marketing campaign needs a design and testing phase, just like anything else. Plan on putting in the time to make sure that your messages get past all techniques used for fighting spam, from content filters to image blocking and java-script suppression. You can send out a million messages blindly and not ever know if they are even seen.
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.
When acquiring e-mail addresses through your website for marketing purposes, make certain that your sign-up form is brief. In general, you can limit the information required to sign up to only a name and an e-mail address. Names are useful for personalizing your e-mails. However, if you feel that even the name might be too much, it is perfectly fine to limit your sign-up form to just an e-mail address.
For maximum accessibility, send your email marketing messages in multipart format. Any email clients that support HTML or have it user-enabled will show your content in HTML format. However, if someone receives your email and only allows text content, that is what they will see. Doing this allows everyone to see your message, regardless of their client or settings.
Keep all of your brandings in your email consistent with your business. Don’t make your email appear as though it belongs to another business. Try to stick with your usual colors, voice, and fonts so that the readers can recognize that the email is from you and so they will read it.
Emphasize the benefits of your product or service whenever possible. Subscribers will want to know what’s in it for them, so tell them–in the subject line, in your links, and in your content. Your subscribers will be much more interested in your message if they feel that it can help them in some way.
As you are utilizing engaging emails and targeting the right customers, make sure you are also soliciting feedback from them. Getting feedback from targeted customers is key to knowing what you can do to make your marketing strategies even better. This will help you be able to make your email marketing plan even more effective.
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.
Never send emails to those who did not elect to receive them. Most consumers have no interest in receiving anything spontaneously peddled to their personal email accounts. Sending mail that isn’t wanted can have an adverse effect on business. Concentrate your efforts on marketing strategies that are well received.
It is important to tie your email marketing efforts together with whatever other marketing strategies you employ. Email recipients may also be interested in special offers delivered by post, mobile marketing, or social-networking tie-ins. You should introduce this subject with delicacy. It is best to proceed only after an email subscriber has demonstrated some interest and loyalty.
Making effective use of email to promote your business can be tricky, but it is easier once you know what you are doing. Done properly, email marketing can dramatically boost your visibility. Make good use of the tips and techniques you have learned from this article to bring more customers to your business.