Marketing Emails

Today, it is vitally important to spend your marketing dollars on inexpensive efforts that get your message directly to your audience. You already have the best tool at your disposal: e-mail. You are probably already using e-mail in your business. But if you haven't incorporated it into your marketing efforts you are really missing the boat. E-mail marketing is a fantastic tool and you should do what you can to get the most out of it. When thought out and done well, e-mail marketing can be a fantastic part of your overall marketing efforts.

This may be stating the obvious, but before you can implement an e-mail marketing campaign, you've got to collect e-mails. Your best tool for collecting new e-mails for your list is your web site. Every page should have a way for people to subscribe to your list. A lot of people who find you through a search engine, won�t land on your home page. You'll miss a lot of potential subscribers if you don�t let them opt in wherever they land. Another great resource is your customer base. These are already people who know and like you. Each time you touch a customer ask for an e-mail address. Even in the messages you send as part of your e-mail marketing, make sure people can subscribe. You want those e-mails to get forwarded around. Putting an opt-in option in the body of your e-mails makes sure you capture this viral momentum.

Decide how you plan to utilize e-mail marketing. You'll want to decide how often and why you send mail to your list. Will this be part of one campaign or an ongoing effort? You may want to start sending a monthly newsletter. You might want to advertise a sale or promote a new product. Figure out what you want to say and when you want to say it. Because e-mail is cheap and easy it is tempting to not take it seriously in your marketing efforts It is also tempting to send out something every day. Your e-mails should reflect the image you want to project of your company and the message you want to convey. They should also be timed to convey relevant information. You don't want to irritate your list members with a deluge of e-mails.

Once you decide what you want to say and when, you can analyze your list and target your efforts. This is called segmentation. Take a look at your goal and figure out which segments make sense. Then really analyze your data. People are much more likely to respond to e-mail marketing efforts if the message is one in which they are interested. Customers that shop for baby clothes in your store may not be as interested in your gardening products. Give people the opportunity to tell you what they want to know and then respect that limitation.

Make it a priority to track the success rate of your e-mail marketing campaigns. Did your list shrink or grow after? Did more people shop your sale this year? Whatever metric you use, find a way to determine whether your time and efforts were worthwhile. If your list shrank, find out why. When people unsubscribe, ask them to fill out a very short questionnaire. This is a great way to find out how you can do better. The best way to prevent list shrinkage is to put in the hard work from the beginning to make sure people get the messages they want to hear when they want to get them.

There are lots of books and resources to tell you how to do e-mail marketing. But a little common sense will go a long way. Get all the e-mails you can using your customers and your web site. Make it a priority to plan how you will use your list. Be judicious in how often you send messages and pay attention to how they look. Break down your list into segments that make sense. Target your efforts so that people get information they want when they want it. Do your best to maintain your list and retain as many members as possible. When people do unsubscribe, find out why. Your colleagues may need a little education on how to do e-mail marketing effectively. But it will be worth the time. With a little thought and effort you can make your e-mail marketing efforts a major part of your marketing strategy.