Email marketing has opened up a whole new means of communication for businesses to reach their customers. Now businesses can potentially reach millions of people all over the world at a fraction of the cost of reaching them through the postal service. This article can help you learn more about email marketing and how you can use it for your business.
You, or someone else, should proofread your email before you send it to customers. Ensure that it is free from typographical and grammatical errors. You should also make certain that the message flows easily. By checking these three issues are addressed, your email marketing will have a professional appearance.
To make sure your emails don’t turn people off, always seek permission before sending them out. Include a subscription button on your site, and encourage regular customers to have their friends sign up as well. If you’d like to give people some extra encouragement to subscribe, you could feature subscriber only deals.
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.
If you want your email marketing messages to get to the right inboxes, target anyone whom you send to. If you already have a core set of fans or followers, offer discounts or promotions to those who get friends to show up. Anyone curious in your products and services probable has known others with similar interests, which mean you, can organically grow your list through existing social relationships.
Test out different subject lines with the A/B testing method. Choose an email and split the mailing list in half, sending each half an email with a different subject line. This allows you to determine which subject lines are successful and which ones are simply ignored.
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.
Test your email layouts. The most urgent information and the newest offers should generally appear near the top of the message. Yet be sure that you always try out different formats so that you know which ones you get the most responses from. After you’ve found a format that works, implement it in all your emails. Your customers will appreciate being given the time to learn where the various elements of the email are so they know what will come next week.
Make your emails rich in content and place helpful information in them as opposed to just placing sales information. Information that is useful to readers and can’t be found on your site is particularly appreciated. Make sure to add special offers and discounts for your products and services. Be prepared to offer holiday or birthday greetings, and other special communications, that don’t always appear to be eliciting a purchase.
Your email marketing campaign will be more effective if you make it easy for customers to unsubscribe. This may seem paradoxical, but people will tend to trust you more if you make them feel as if they are in control. Post the unsubscribe link in an obvious place so they can find it easily.
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.
Your emails should be readable sans images. Many email providers disable images by default, and unless the user changes their settings, they will not be able to see any images you include. Because of this, any images you include in the emails that you send should also be followed by comprehensive text.
Do not send out email messages that depend on images to relay important information. Many modern email clients – web-based ones, especially – will not display images automatically. Your messages may look strange or be impossible for some people to read if the information depends too heavily on graphics. You should always use text for your important information and use alt tags to describe your images.
Do not take up permanent residence in your readers inboxes. Remember that they email for a number a reasons, from work to family. You are probably sharing that space with other marketers. Send out messages often enough to stay on their mental radar, but more than once a week is probably going to annoy them and backfire.
Balance when you send emails. Sending them too frequently can come across as spam and may cause you to lose readers. Not emailing frequent enough can make the recipients feel like they’ve wasted time signing up for emails that they’re not getting enough of. Remember your goals and audience so you can pick a happy medium for your campaign’s frequency.
A previously stated, email marketing has brought about an entire new world for businesses to communicate with their customers. Email marketing has so much potential if it is done correctly. This article provides information and tips to help you develop a email marketing plan and to harness that power for your own business.
