Many an online business has been made, or broken, by a single email marketing campaign. If you do it right it can go viral, driving massive traffic to your website. If you do it wrong, on the other hand, it can sink your company. Read this article in full to find tips and techniques to teach you how to do it in a way that benefits your company.
Always get permission! Unsolicited email is not welcome, and in certain cases, can get your ISP blocked. When contacting someone, always include a newsletter or an offer – this way the customer has the chance to agree to receive your messages. The last thing you want is to be branded a spammer.
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.
Before sending out emails to your subscribers, try to let them know what you will be sending them and how often they can expect to hear from you. This way, they know when to expect your email and they can prevent it from getting automatically sent to their spam folder.
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.
Try engaging the customer using the subject line of the email. Your email must grab your reader’s attention the minute it lands inside of their inbox, otherwise it may go into their trash. If you have a weak or uninteresting subject line, that is exactly what will happen. So try spicing up your subject line with some creativity.
Do what you can to make your email go into your customers’ inboxes. You must work to get your email to pass ISPs and not get tagged as spam messages. If they get tagged as spam messages, your recipient may never see them. Check with customers to see if they are getting your emails, or if they’re no longer interested.
Ask your customers for expressed permission if you want to send them email messages. Being known as a spammer is the worst reputation a company can have online and will lead to a loss in customers and sales. Excessive complaints of spamming may also cause some internet service providers to ban all of your messages.
Review some real-life spam for pointers on what you should never do. Make an email account, display it around the Internet, and look at the spam come in. Look at the negative aspects of each email and consider how it could have been done better. Taking steps to set you apart from spammers will give your brand a boost in credibility.
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.
You should try and build an email list the best that you can from networking in person as well as on the Internet. You should not buy or rent lists of names that you will email to drum up business. There is no guarantee that any of the people you contact will be interested and you may even end up getting reported to your email service provider.
Make it easy for people to unsubscribe from your list. This might seem counter-productive since you don’t want your customers to lose interest and leave. However, if your customers aren’t interested in your newsletters anymore, they might get annoyed if they can’t easily unsubscribe. Provide a large button or link so that customers who have lost interest can find it without an extensive search.
Tell a story with your email marketing campaign. You must think about how to grab the readers’ attention. How better to grab their attention than to tell a story that involves success in your business niche. This gets them intrigued, and it gives you an opportunity to get new customers.
In order to better target your e-mail marketing campaign, you can allow people to select particular categories of e-mails that they wish to receive. This will ensure that the e-mails that you send contain information that they are interested in. It also reduces the chance of people unsubscribing due to receiving too many e-mails that they are not interested in.
The only way to create and build an opt-in email list is to give your readers a chance to sign up! This function can be included on your website so that interested customers can receive updates, as they become available.
If you are going to incorporate graphics into your e-mails, you should make certain that the e-mails are still readable if the recipient chooses not to display those graphics. A great way to do this is to utilize ALT tags so that replacement text will be displayed when the images cannot be displayed. It might also be a good idea to place the bulk of your images near the bottom of the e-mail.
When you know what to do, creating an email marketing campaign will be easy, effective and profitable. You’ll better your online reputation while building profits, and the initial investment of both time and money is small. There is no better way to grow your business, so start creating your campaign today!
