Email marketing means more than just sending out mass emails to everyone who has ever bought something from your business. A properly conducted email marketing campaign can be complicated to put together, but if you know what you are doing, the rewards can be great. Read on to find out how to do so.
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.
Offer a coupon to customers who sign up for your marketing email list. Put a form on your website where customers can sign up and set the form to email automatically new customers a coupon when they submit the form. This encourages customers to agree to allow you to send them marketing materials so that you won’t be accused of sending out spam.
Steer clear of renting or purchasing lists to pad your email marketing database. Not only do you not know if the emails you have purchased are truly your target market, but the lists can actually hurt your deliver-ability rates and ultimately your reputation. As much as possible, build your list organically.
The beginning and conclusion of your marketing email should include a call to action for your customers. Be clear about what you want your customer to do, and include at least two obvious links to your site. Use clear suggestions that direct your customers to the offer your email is promoting.
Slowly build your contact list. Start with those who have already appreciated what you offer and then move on to areas where you can engage your prospects. It can take a while to pick whom should be receiving your emails, but it’ll be worth it in the end to build a reliable contact list.
While you want to use your email marketing to improve your sales. The only way to get potential customers to read your emails is to convince them that they have value. To do this, your emails should always contain concrete, useful information and relevant links, and not just generic sales fluff.
If you use images in your email newsletters, put text to the right of the images. Research shows that customers are far more likely to click on a link or button that is placed to the left of an image than one that is placed anywhere else on the page.
Avoid using exclamation marks as crutches in your emails. If you want to express a sense of urgency or importance, use the structure of your sentence and the words you choose to to make that impact. Overusing this form of punctuation can turn potential customers off and make your message seem insincere.
Collecting and analyzing statistics is as important to the success of an email marketing campaign as it is to a business website. Invest in software that allows you to track the effectiveness of every email, from what percentage of your emails are actually opened to how many result in unsubscriptions.
To ensure that your email marketing is really helping and not hindering your business, pay close attention to the spam that you once deleted from your own email account. See what kind of language you yourself respond most negatively to an alternately what kind of topics make you more likely to open a marketing email.
Right on the subscription form, tell your new subscribers about the emails they can expect you to send them. Inform them not only of the types of messages you will send, but how often you plan to send them. That makes sure that new readers are not shocked by the content they receive, or the amount of email they get from you.
Do not send out rough drafts of your content. Write out what you want to say, and then cut the word count in half and rewrite to fit within your new limit. This generates messages that get to the point. Readers want to spend no more than three paragraphs of time reading your message, and maybe not even that.
An accusation of spamming can be disastrous to a company or website, so be sure to include a confirmation step when you set up the procedure for opting into the email list. Those who have signed up for your list should immediately get a confirmation email regarding their subscription. Make sure that the email gives them the option to accept or reject the subscription. Your customers will appreciate the security measure, and you’ll benefit from having proof that none of your emails can be regarded as spam.
Make your emails concise. No one wants to read through a number of paragraphs when several would have sufficed. People don’t have much time these days, and you could become persona non grata in their email boxes if you don’t appreciate the time crunch that most people have to deal with these days.
Test and design your messages to be readable and functional even if the images and graphics get blocked. Many email clients do this automatically. Make sure that any images you do use have descriptive text substituted via the Alternative attribute that should be available in your email composition software interface.
Running a great email marketing campaign can seem like a daunting prospect, but do not let your fears prevent you from getting started. As you have seen, it does not have to be a onerous chore. If you remember the advice you have read in the preceding article, you should be able to put together a highly effective campaign.
