The Top 10 Things Businesses Must Know About Email Marketing To Be Successful
As an Internet marketer today, it’s extremely important for you to get you marketing message to your target market, as quickly as possible, using several different marketing methods. No longer can you rely on the basic marketing ideas of the past when direct marketing, through mailing houses,was your best alternative for increasing your customer base. With the rising
costs of direct mail, sending your marketing message via email needs to be looked at carefully as one of the tools to use in your marketing arsenal.Here are a few ideas that will help your business be successful when using email marketing.
#1 – Never Purchase An Email Prospect List With Thousands of Names and Email Addresses - The quickest way to get your email business account shut down is to have people contact your email ISP complaining that they are receiving SPAM from you. Most of the emails on these lists have already been provided to hundreds, if not thousands, of other individuals and businesses so the people on these lists are already upset with the SPAM they are receiving.This is definitely NOT the way you want to start off.
#2 – Do Whatever You Can To Drive Traffic To Your Web Site – This may sound strange to you since we’re talking about email marketing, however, the best place for you to get qualified names and email addresses is from those people who are visiting your web site.
#3 – Bribe Your Web Site Visitors - Offer them something special, something they feel is valuable, as an incentive, for them to give you their first name and email address while they are on your web site. This can be a subscription to your newsletter, a free special report, etc.. Once you have an email list, you can use an excellent service like www.zoommailer.com to design and deliver your newsletters and then monitor the results of your email campaigns. When it comes to writing special reports, you can find freelance writers on the Internet who can write at a very reasonable price. A good resource I have used
is called www.elance.com
#4 – Register With An Autoresponder Service – To be effective, you need to sign-up with a service that will deliver, automatically, your special reports and information about newsletter registrations. One of the most effective I have found is www.aweber.com. While on their web site, they have all of the tools you will need to send messages out automatically to the people who sign-up at your web site.
#5 - Install An Opt-In Form on Your Web Site – This is a special form that is either a pop-up (comes into view at some point in time while the visitor is on your web site) or is visible at all times on your web site’s Home Page. Here you need to make your compelling offer. List the name of the newsletter or the special report they will receive and then have, at a minimum, 2 fields of information for them to fill in, to qualify to receive what you are offering. The 2 fields of information you need are . . 1) Their First Name 2) Their Primary
Email Address. They will then need to click on a button that will send this information to your autoresonder service. Within seconds after receiving this information, your autoresponder will automatically send, to the email address they provided on the form, your special incentive.
#6 – Test, Test, Test – If you are really serious about Internet marketing, you will want to get tracking software that will help you know what is being successful and what is not. One of the best tools I have used can be found at www.adtrackz.com Visit their web site and learn all you can about ad tracking. This information will be very valuable to you and your business in the future.
#7 – Follow-up On Your Opt-in Subscribers – Now that you have people who are requesting to receive your newsletter or special report, you need to followup with them and try to get them to make a purchase. To do this though, you need to “warm them up” by building a relationship with them first. They need to receive free advice from you and other useful information so they trust you before they will decide to buy from you. I would also use a service like www.zoommailer.com to help me with my email campaigns and by using their reports, I’ll know exactly how effective these campaigns are.
#8 – Designing an Effective Email - Writing emails that will be read by your prospects is very important. They need to be short, yet to the point. They also should be no more than 60 characters per line. Even fewer characters than this per line is very acceptable and preferred by most readers. Also, your email subject line content is the most important in any email you send. Think about it, when you receive emails, the content of the subject line is what drives you to open it or discard it. It’s like the title of a book or magazine article. So, think carefully about what you want to say and make it interesting enough so they will want to open your email. Also, before you end your email,be sure to always place your web site link at the bottom along with a link where they can unsubscribe from future emails. This last part is very important if you want to keep your SPAM complaints to a minimum.
#9 – Be Sure You Do Not Mail Your To Your List Too Often – If you’re like me, you receive many emails everyday and you constantly need to decide if the value you are receiving from the sender of these emails is really worth it. I have several people who I continue to let send me information because there is value in what they are sending. However, if they email me every day, most likely, I will ask to be removed. I just can’t accept this level of marketing from anyone. In many cases, sending out your email message one time per week is very acceptable. In some cases, based on the value you are providing, sending out your email message 2 or 3 times per week, is also acceptable. However, be very careful with this and monitor the amount of people who ask to be removed from your list.
email addresses just because they never purchase. You never know who your emails get forwarded to and if the person, at some point in time, will decide to try what you have to offer.