Email marketing is a marketing method that uses emails to promote to customers. To some, this can sound a bit difficult, but it really isn’t. Using email marketing to reach your customer base isn’t as hard as you might think, especially if you pay close attention to the tips in the following article.
An excellent tip for email marketing is to follow up with some type of update on your products or services that you are providing. For example, you could add a “buy now” feature onto your email. The ending of your email could inform your readers to keep in mind the up-sell as well.
Insert a link to your subscription form into your marketing newsletters. That way, if your customers forward marketing emails to their friends, their friends can easily subscribe to your list too. Using this strategy makes it easy for you to build a large list of potential customers who have agreed to receive your marketing emails.
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.
When you ask people to opt-in, let them know what to expect. Tell them what you will be sending and how often you will send it. People will be more likely to sign up if they know that you are not going to flood their inboxes with wordy emails that they have no intention of reading.
Use a couple of different subject lines to test which one has a better response. Choose one email, randomly split the mailing list in two and send each half the same email with different subject lines. This allows you to determine which subject lines lead to subscribers opening your emails, and which get deleted without a second thought.
Test email formats. Your email should be like a funnel, with the most important items at the top and the least important items at the bottom. But you should try different formats to see which one gives you the most responses. Once you have a short list of successful formats, continue to use them. 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 sure your emails are consistent with any branding you have done. You should be including your company colors, logos and anything else unique to your business in your emails. Customers should be able to recognize your emails when they arrive in their in-boxes so that they are not automatically deleted.
The greater number of options that you provide to your customers, the greater effectiveness that you’ll experience with your email marketing attempts. It is a good idea to allow subscribers to select the quantity of emails they will receive, along with the frequency at which these emails are sent. Any information provided by the subscriber should also be at their discretion. The more control they have over the process, the more comfortable they will be.
Give customers the choice of getting a plain text version of your email marketing materials or a rich text version. Customers can choose the option they prefer when they sign up for your newsletter. Plain text versions don’t include graphics, so customers with slower connections or overactive spam filters might appreciate this option.
Use passive and active feedback to improve your email marketing strategy. Ask what they like about your emails, what they don’t and what they’d like to see added, all called active feedback. Passive feedback is more subtle and even invisible to the reader. You can use any type of internet software tool to determine which links get the most clicks.
Your customers will be more open to your email marketing campaign if you let them choose the frequency of your messages when they sign up. Knowing how often they can expect to hear from you will keep them from feeling surprised or overwhelmed by your messages. This will make them more receptive to what you have to say.
When following up with clients, you could send a follow-up email to them with a message that confirms their interest in one of your products or services. You could include a link that says to watch it. The ending of the message could include another link that allows them to add your product or service to their cart.
Program your email messages to include the recipient’s name in the subject line or body of your message. An email message that includes the recipient’s name will feel much more personal. This sense of connection with the marketing will make them inclined to read the email and more likely to follow links within it.
Tell your customers up front what they can expect from your email marketing campaign. Include information at opt-in that will let your customers know if they can expect to hear from you monthly, quarterly, or more often. Tell them what you will include. Whether it be sales, coupons, or special promotions.
To have a subscriber list you can trust, make sure that pre checked boxes are not enabled on your opt-in page. Readers do not want to start getting your emails accidentally. You do not want that either, because you only want to market to those that are actually interested in what you offer.
Hopefully now that you have read this article, you are a little less intimidated by email marketing. The widely used marketing practice is fairly simple to implement and can be adapted in no time at all. Simply remember all of the tips that you read here and you will be on your way to using emails for marketing.