When you want to market your business, you might wonder which techniques are the best to use. Email marketing is a proven method of communicating with existing and potential customers alike. The following paragraphs contain a number of ideas you can apply to find success in email marketing.
Ask your customers for feedback on your emails. Since your customers are the most important part of your campaign, it is important to know if they are pleased with the emails they receive from you. You could ask them to fill out a short survey with a few questions on what they like and what they dislike.
If you buy a list of emails to send to, check and make sure it is up to date. Sometimes lists for sail might match your target demographics but be woefully out of date. The number of addresses now defunct can be as high as 25% of the overall list.
Before sending any emails, be sure to proofread them thoroughly. Be certain that anything you send out is grammatically correct. Double check how the layout will look on all platforms, from your browser to your cell phone. Double-check your links to make sure people can access your website.
Be persistent with your email marketing messages. It can take as many as twenty emails to one prospect before you routinely have their attention. Try telling a good story through your messages. Hook them with a few messages and let it unfold over a series. Running contests that span several weeks are good way to do this.
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.
Be especially careful when crafting your first three emails to new customers. A new customer should get an introductory email inviting them to join your marketing list. Once they accept your invitation, the next email should tell them about discounts or special offers they can expect to get now that they’ve signed up. The third email should contain their first newsletter and their special offer.
Email is a great marketing tool, but it is not an arena where the hard sell is appreciated. Never pressure your subscribers into buying. Put sales pitches at the tail end of your emails, especially if your readers signed up with expectations of informative content. Consider email as a tool to cultivate interest, not instant sales.
When it comes to sending out effective marketing emails, you need to be your biggest critic. You should read every single email that you add to the rotation. If you find it hard to finish an email, then how can you expect potential customers to be inspired by it? Also, keep longtime readers engaged by adding and updating your emails often.
Use colors and fonts that reflect your business and are easy to view. Even if the content is interesting, difficult to read fonts and harsh colors can cause some customers to reject the email, and possibly future ones as well. Use the same color scheme and fonts for all of your emails.
From time to time, change up the format of your emails. Try a plain text email if you typically send them in HTML format. If you write it well, you can create a nice emotional connection between your company and the newsletter readers.
Keep all of your branding 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.
One way to keep your email readers engaged is to ask them questions. These should not be rhetorical questions, either. Provide a feedback channel they can use to send you answers. You could ask for direct replies via email, or send your readers to your social networking pages. However you arrange it, asking for two-way communication is a great way to cultivate loyalty in your subscribers.
Use auto responding messages to your advantage in your email marketing campaign. These can help you stay in touch with your recipients. They can be effective if your subscribers sign up for emails about various things you offer. You can tailor these to correspond with the information they signed up for. It also allows you an easier way to stay in touch.
Avoid using the character string “$$$” in your marketing messages. Many spam messages use this character string either in the subject line or body of their emails. If you use it, people and email servers may treat your emails as if they were spam, too. Your emails may end up ignored or even blocked.
When utilizing e-mail marketing, make sure that you never spam your customer’s inbox. One of the quickest ways to lose the trust of your customer is to send spam to his or her email address. To make sure your marketing practices fall within mandated regulations, thoroughly read the CAN-SPAM act.
Make use of pre-headers in your marketing emails. Certain email clients – the more advanced web-based ones in particular – display a short summary for each email in the inbox. This is the pre-header. It is easy to set up. Clients generate pre-headers from the first line of text in the message. Compose your emails accordingly!
Include your personal branding in the emails you send to your list. Customers already know your designs, logo and colors and they associate you with these details. Consistently making your emails coordinate with your website will make them appear more familiar and make them less probable to be deleted.
Email marketing is a simple and inexpensive method of product promotion. Put the tips you read in this article to use to make sure that your e-mail marketing campaign is what it needs to be to stand out with your customers and make the right impression.
