Email marketing is a
way of directly communicating with a target audience to market your website or
increase awareness about an upcoming promotion connected with your site. In
general, the term "email marketing" is used to refer to any emails sent to
customers or potential customers in relation to your website.
Email marketing can be a very effective tool to inform customers of future
events, or attract new customers by increasing awareness about what your site
offers.
Success in email marketing does not come from thoughtlessly blasting out email
ads without working to build your own customer base. The basis of successful
email marketing is to build existing in-house customer lists, augmenting them by
outreach through outside mailing lists.
Your own email list allows you to develop a long-term relationship with your
online audience -- to communicate with and market to them over and over.
Generally email marketing can be implemented with these 3 objectives in mind:
(1) Sending direct promotional emails to try and acquire new customers
or persuade existing customers to buy again
(2) Sending emails designed to encourage customer loyalty and enhance
the customer relationship
(3) Placing your marketing messages or advertisements in emails sent
by other people
Of course, it seems easy to collect hundreds of thousands of email addresses
and send everybody an email about your website. Unfortunately, it isn't quite
that simple. Essentially, you require the permission of the email recipient to
send them info about your site otherwise it may be regarded as "spam" which is
unsolicited bulk email.
In the marketing industry, spam is definitely a four letter word and
something that should be avoided at all costs. If you are accused of spamming,
there could be direct consequences such as damage to your reputation, your
website may be shut down and your email accounts closed.
In conjunction with this, there is a strong argument from successful
marketers that long-term email campaigns only work consistently when they are
based on permission in the first place. There are plenty of acceptable ways to
market your website by email. Don't be tempted to take shortcuts because chances
are it could be your downfall.
It's important to stress that anyone considering email marketing must read up
on the subject of permission and spam. If you don't understand the importance of
permission and the risks of ignoring it, then you could be heading for
commercial disaster.
Don't panic, though. It's actually relatively easy to ensure that the address
lists you use or build yourself are permission-based.
Below are 3 possible ways to do that:
(1) New Content Notification
You've probably seen sites that offer to notify you whenever they have new
information, products, or content.
To tell you the truth, this is probably the least effective kind of opt-in
list, simply because most people won't sign-up. Instead, they'll bookmark your
site thinking they'll just come back from time to time - but don't count it!
Of course, there are certain kinds of sites that CAN benefit from this form
of opt-in list. For example, if you have a site that runs contests, you can
offer to notify people whenever a new contest begins.
(2) Free Report
Another kind of opt-in list involves the offer of a free report, or series of
reports. However, be careful with this!
By offering a free report, you are restricting the number of times you can
mail to your list, it's not a good idea to capture the names and then bombard
them with a continual stream of sales material when they were only expecting one
or two reports.
This would be considered spamming! If you offer a free report, it should
contain "real" information and a reason for them to visit your website again.
(3) Free eZine/Newsletter
A great way to build an opt-in list is by offering a free subscription to an
electronic newsletter or ezine.
Newsletters are a really good way of regularly reminding your subscribers
about your website and products. By writing a newsletter that contains copy
which is both informative and compelling, you draw subscribers back to your
website again and again!
Having an ezine/Newsletter is one of the best ways to build credibility and
rapport with your readers and customers. If you understand the value of a
"Lifetime Customer", then you know exactly how powerful an ezine or newsletter
can be!
So now that you know how to get your opt-in mailing list, it's time that you
learn how to run your email promotions effectively when you do it.
Below are 6 tips to consider for successful email marketing:
(1) Perhaps the most critical step in guaranteeing the success of your
e-mail promotions is that you e-mail a targeted list of opt-in subscribers who
have specifically requested to receive information on a particular topic from
you. You'll be wasting your time and energy if you don't.
(2) Personalize each and every email. A phrase like "Dear John"
will have more impact than just "Dear customer". For that person assumes
you know him.
(3) Write benefit-oriented subject lines or you can ask a question or
trigger curiosity. Subject lines are critical in ensuring whether your email
gets opened or not.
(4) Make it easy to read. Check grammatical errors and proof read
everything. Keep paragraphs short, between 4-6 lines.
(5) Give the opportunity for your readers to opt-out of your mailing
list. At the end of all e-mail you send, it's extremely important that you give
people the opportunity to opt-out or be removed from your e-mail database. This
is really, really important!
(6) Test your email promotions. Before sending your e-mail to your
entire list, take an extra 15 minutes to test how it looks in a variety of
e-mail clients like hotmail, yahoo, outlook express, eudora etc...
Email marketing is an excellent way to increase the exposure of your website
and advertise any special offers that are currently available through your
website. Executed well, a targeted email campaign can have a dramatic influence
on your traffic, acquisition of visitors and traffic behavior.
About The Author
Jean Lam publishes the Zine Guru monthly newsletter. To subscribe, just send a
blank email to
zinegurunews@getresponse.com and instantly receive a FREE valuable ebook.
Check out also his internet marketing resource site at
ZineGuru.com for cutting
edge marketing tips, tricks, techniques and secrets.
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