Marketing your business is a big job. You need to have techniques and methods that allow you to target your customers and clients in a way that fires them up for what you have to offer. Email marketing can be an excellent tool for your marketing strategy if you know how to use it. Here are some good tips to get you going.
Before you put someone on your email marketing list, you need to have their permission. If you don’t have their permission, you will be responsible for sending spam and there will be many complaints. Your email provider may even dissolve your account if they get wind of what you’re doing. Prevent that from happening by requesting that people subscribe to your 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.
Post a version of your newsletter with graphics and animation on your website. Then send your email list a plain text version of the newsletter with a link to the web version. This keeps your emails simple enough to stop them from being diverted to the spam folder as well as encouraging your customers to visit your website.
Your color scheme should be consistent and should reflect your brand. If your colors are all over the board, you will appear amateurish and your efforts may not achieve the results that you desire. You can look on sites like COLOURlovers if you need some good ideas to get you going.
Try following up to your clients with a FAQ section. Include a link onto your email that says to click here to view the frequently asked questions in order for them to have a better understanding of your company. The concluding postscript could inform them to make sure they see you in action.
Allow for conversation through your email marketing message campaign. Ask questions of your subscribers, or posit thought provoking queries. The responses will make your readers feel like they are part of a relationship instead of marketing targets. The responses you get will help you know where you are going right, and you might discover useful information about your base.
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.
When it comes to email marketing, brevity is a virtue. Use clear, direct language whenever possible. Doing this will show that you respect the time of your readers. Also, readers will read the whole email this way. Keep in mind that you are likely to have important content throughout the entire email which makes this critical to your success.
You can create a targeted mailing list by having customers get their friends to sign up too. The reasoning is that their friends are probably interested in the same things as they are and trust a friend’s recommendation. Include a subscribe for the link in your emails so that customers can forward them to friends, helping your mailing list grow by leaps and bounds.
Offer your customers a chance to sign up for your special email promotions. This way, they will have voluntarily signed up to be receiving your emails and the messages and promotions will not come across to them as spam. Gaining the permission of your customers to email them with offers will help keep your customer’s trust intact.
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.
Reflect current festivities with your email marketing messages. Have a theme focusing or referring to love at Valentine’s Day. Be thankful to your subscribers around Thanksgiving. Sending out content in tune with current holidays lets your readers know that your messages are up to date and not just old content being regurgitated by some server.
Be straight forward with your recipients about what they will be receiving. When someone opts to receive e-mail from you, make sure they know what they’re agreeing to. Keep information easily visible about what they will be receiving in these e-mails and how often these e-mail will arrive in their inbox.
After about nine months, ask your subscribers to re-confirm their wishes to receive emails from you. Retention can be tricky, but those on your email list will appreciate you asking, and will be less likely to unsubscribe. The re-confirmation process will also let you know which readers are loyal to you.
Avoid over-using exclamation points in your email marketing copy. An exclamation point does not make a poor sales message into a good one. Good marketing copy is punchy and catchy on its own, without the help of added punctuation. Focus on writing quality copy, not on how many exclamation marks you can use.
You should use feedback to improve your email marketing campaign, indirectly as well as directly. How your subscribers respond – or don’t – is valuable data, too. You can categorize your subscribers based on what links they’ve clicked, what purchases they’ve made, and when and how they’ve communicated with you. Tailor your subsequent emails to fit your different subscriber categories.
Email marketing can be a great opportunity to reach your clients and customers. If you implement the tips that this article has given you, you are likely to notice that your target market is more satisfied. Use the tips here to create a solid email marketing plan that ultimately raises your profits.
