Email marketing is not simply a matter of sending out emails to customers and potential customers. You need to know about how it works, what your customers want from you and how to make your email marketing work for you, your customers and your business. Use the tips from this article to develop an email marketing campaign that will give everyone what they want.
Minimize traditional email marketing activities during the holidays. Customers are preoccupied with family and friends, and are less likely to be paying attention to business email. Your odds of ending up in the spam box are considerably higher, which could have longer term implications for your bottom line. The major exception to this would be a business directly related to the holiday activities. Otherwise, give yourself a break and enjoy some downtime yourself. Business will be back on track in a day or two.
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.
Provide subscribers with a way out. Place an “unsubscribe” link in your emails or on your website to allow them to remove themselves from your list. You should also set up your list to cull itself by removing subscribers after a particular number of messages prompt no response or action from the recipient. This prevents your emails from becoming annoying to disinterested subscribers and preserves your image.
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.
The easier it is to subscribe to your email newsletter, the more subscribers you will have. If you have a physical store, ask your customers for their email address when they make a purchase. If you sell on a website, ask them for their address when they are ready to check out.
Use your email marketing to get your customers more involved with other promotion portals. For example, always give readers several ways to learn more about what every email is discussing. End every email with your contact information and web address, encourage them to share special promotions through Facebook “Like” buttons or direct them to a video that shows them how best to use a new product.
Get creative with your email designs to find out what works best. Send out a few emails with content and links that differ in their fonts and text color. Play around with image positioning, including buttons and logos. After you’ve sent the emails, find out which ones had the best click-thru rates. Stick with those for the time being, but change it up on occasion to see if you can find a method that works even better. More click-thru rates equate to more sales.
Give customers the choice of getting a plain text version of your email marketing materials or a rich text version. Customers can choose the option they prefer when they sign up for your newsletter. Plain text versions don’t include graphics, so customers with slower connections or overactive spam filters might appreciate this option.
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.
You don’t want to alienate a good customer just to keep your email base high. For this reason, you should always give readers an easy and obvious way to unsubscribe. To put a silver lining on unsubscribe requests, constantly ask readers why they want to unsubscribe and use that information to improve the experience for future readers.
To avoid complications resulting from being identified as a spammer, notify your ISP of your email marketing intentions in advance. If any unhappy reader ever reports you, this will give your ISP the head’s up that your marketing efforts are legitimate. Your ISP may also be able to suggest an upgraded account that eases your email marketing operations.
For maximum accessibility, send your email marketing messages as 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.
Encourage your recipients to forward your e-mails to friends that might be interested. A recommendation from a friend is very effective due to the fact that people trust their friends. This is a great way to introduce your business to potential customers that are very likely to have an interest in your products or services.
While extra graphics and other things that can easily be blocked by filters are unnecessary and detrimental to your campaign, your company logo does need to be included in order to make things’ consistent, familiar, and professional when you are in contact with prospective customers. Failure to do this will harm your email marketing campaign immensely.
As noted above, email marketing is not as simple as just sending out emails to customers and potential customers. Your content and strategy makes all the difference in whether you email marketing will be a success for whether it will just be another piece of overlooked spam. Use the techniques and the information from the above article to help you launch and email campaign that you and your customers will love.
