Improve your Business with a Smart Email Marketing Campaign

Article by Jeff O’shea

Is your business not working the way it should? Are you not able to attract loads of customers due to lack of publicity? Try to get an email marketing campaign. Yes, it will surely help you in attracting new business.

Understanding email marketing campaign

Since technology is developing and progressing at a very rapid pace, the use of the internet has increased more and more by many businesses in order to market and publicize their products and services.

Email has become an extremely cost effective method of marketing a business. There are various aspects that are essential in carrying out a successful email marketing campaign. Email marketing companies just do not send mails to customers all over the world, they focus on the email content that has been delivered, as well. The following are some tips for an effective email marketing campaign.

Focusing on the content

The company that is carrying out an email marketing campaign must focus on the most essential aspect that helps in the success of a marketing campaign, that is to let customers know what is in it for them, how can they benefit from that product and earn loads of money. The more customers get attracted to the site, the more will they think over it. Also, companies must stress on the exclusive advantages of the product or service they are offering to their customers so that the customers get complete knowledge about the product or service they are viewing on the website. This is the major tool of growing a business and is necessary for every business at its initial stage.

Sending emails to all customers

Then another most essential step during an email marketing campaign is to send emails to all those thousands of customers who may turn out to be the most precious customers in the future. The email marketing campaign companies can easily get the email list from different directories, websites and records but the companies are suggested to use the best way and that is to go for permission based email marketing. This would include opt in emailing options for clients in website pages.

Companies can also send emails through an SMTP server which responds automatically instead of manually sending mails to thousands of people and then keep checking their response.

Carrying out an email marketing campaign

Well, carrying out an email marketing campaign is a big task. It needs experts in the field of internet marketing with skilled resources in order to achieve the best benefits. Choose an established email marketing company that can hold responsibility of everything from sending mails to responding to mails and so on. An Email marketing campaign is the best way to enhance a business but you should do it very intelligently and smartly in order to make his effort worthwhile.

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Google Analytics: Using Metrics to Track and Improve Email Marketing Results

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics has become one of the industry’s most powerful Internet Marketing tools, helping advertisers, publishers and website owners improve their sales conversion, campaign targeting and marketing initiatives. Previously dubbed Urchin, Google Analytics is a robust web statistics software application provided by Google free of charge.

Simple and easy to use, anyone can start benefiting from Google Analytics in just a few minutes. Just add some basic code onto your website, and you’re ready to begin monitoring visitor trends.

After basic set-up, marketers can track important statistics like visitor referrers, navigation paths, page views, geo-location data and browser type. Know where your visitors come from, whether referred by search engines, ads, emails, blogs or affiliates. Know which cities, states and countries your primary visitor traffic resides in, so you can more carefully target future ad campaigns.

While hugely popular with webmasters and usability professionals, some Marketers have yet to realize the value Google Analytics plays when used to monitor email marketing campaigns. Track, evaluate and analyze results using colorful graphs and charts. Google Analytics makes it easier to identify trends, improve usability and increase your return on investment.

Email Marketing Campaign Set-Up

Using Google Analytics, email marketers gain greater control over the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of each campaign. Send carefully targeted, relevant messages, improve revenue opportunities and enhance your business reputation.

To get started, create a Google Analytics account by visiting www.google.com/analytics. Follow the directions provided to place tracking code onto the relevant website files. Once you’ve created a Google Analytics account and placed the provided code into your website, you’ll need to add parameters to URLs in each email marketing message. These denote which visitors arrive as a result of each email marketing campaign.

While some email marketing products, like StreamSend, add these parameters automatically, it takes just a few minutes to set it up manually.

Google Analytics looks for a few basic values in each link, namely the campaign source, campaign medium and campaign name. To set-up these values manually, simply change the parameter names shown in parentheses below:

1. Campaign Source (utm_source). This identifies the name of your email marketing system, such as StreamSend. If you don’t use an email marketing system, you can label your campaign source ‘Email Marketing’.

2. Campaign Medium (utm_medium). This identifies the campaign instrument used. In the case of email marketing, your medium is ‘email’.

3. Campaign Name (utm_campaign). This identifies the name of your campaign. The Campaign Name helps you differentiate between various campaigns or unique messages within each. Most Email Marketers use their message subject line or other identifying value for this parameter.

Using this process, campaign managers can monitor in-bound visitor traffic for any destination URL, whether a main landing page, a product page or other sub-page.

Example: Main Landing Page

* Before tagging: http://www.example.com/

* After tagging: http://www.example.com/?utm_source=StreamSend&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=My%2BEmail%2BSubject

Example: Sub-Page

* Before tagging: http://www.example.com/index.php?page=home

* http://www.example.com/index.php?page=home&utm_source=StreamSend&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=My%2BEmail%2BSubject

Tracking Email Campaign Results

Once an email campaign is properly coded and delivered, Google Analytics automatically monitors resulting website traffic. Find out which links were most popular with your recipients, when they visited your website, how long they stayed and where they navigated following arrival. Then adjust campaigns, body text layout and other variables to improve results over time.

To view campaign results:

1. Log into your Google Analytics account.

2. On your Dashboard, click ‘Traffic Sources’.

3. View your ‘Top Traffic Sources’ or click ‘View Full Report’ to see all traffic sources.

4. Locate and click the link identifying your email marketing Campaign Source. In our example above, your Campaign Source is your email marketing product, i.e. StreamSend, or ‘Email Marketing’.

On your Campaign Source page, Google Analytics provides details on the number of visitors generated by your campaign, the number of pages they visited, average time on your website, percent of new visitors to your website and the average bounce rate.

Campaign managers can also drill-down using the segments drop-down menu. This provides even greater detail on individual campaigns, keywords, geographic regions, browser types, operating systems and visitor activity, like the most popular landing and exit pages. Each results page provides the means to drill-down even further and fine-tune your data.

Google Analytics dramatically enhances the abilities e-commerce firms have in retaining and converting customers. Simply use the E-commerce tab to display purchase information to calculate ROI numbers for your campaigns.

Using Google Analytics, Email Marketers can discover simple ways to more effectively tailor their promotional messages, design and layout to their audience’s preferences, minimize steps in the purchase process, reduce shopping cart abandonment, improve landing page effectiveness and keep visitors on your website even longer by identifying and optimizing the weak links where most of your visitors exit. Use today’s robust delivery and tracking tools, and make each message count.

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Improve Your Email Marketing Software Results with Calls To Action

While many companies are using email marketing software to get their messages in front of their target audience and captive markets, savvy email marketers know that a good ‘call to action’ can take their results to the next level.

A call to action is a standard marketing term that spans all media. Its definition is essentially word usage that encourages a reader or viewer to take action. For example, “Click here to register for the free seminar.” or “Quickly signup for our free trial!” Regardless of whether marketers are talking about an email marketing campaign, radio ad, television spot, or out-of-home (billboard) ad, a first-rate call to action is always ready in their arsenal.

The reason calls to action work so well is because they are direct and to the point. They tell the reader, as clearly as possible, “This is what I want you to do next”. Even though, intuitively, we may think that the reader will figure out what to do next, sometimes they don’t come to that conclusion as quickly as we might expect. Periodically a customer may be thinking, “Do I call them to buy this product?”, “Do I email them to buy this product?” or “Do I click on a link to buy this product?”. If those are the questions your email marketing subscriber is asking, then rest assured that having a big call to action that reads “Click Here To Buy This Product Now” will promptly lead them to your desired answer.

Since your email marketing campaign may have a variety of information, it’s even more important to have clear calls to action because it’s easy for your Recipient to get lost. This is particularly true if your email marketing campaign has multiple links in it, and clicking a link is your desired outcome. Your intention is to make it as obvious as possible which link to click, so your recipient doesn’t get stuck clicking a ‘learn more’ link when they really want a ‘buy now’ link.

Most email marketing software solutions will let you track the links that are being clicked. This is very useful, because you can analyze reports that will clearly show you whether your subscribers are clicking on your call to action link.

It’s important to note that a call to action does not only apply to links. Many email marketers include calls to action such as “Call Us Quickly To Secure Your Spot”, where the desired outcome is a phone call, or “Reply To This Email Immediately For Your Free Gift”, where the desired outcome is an email reply.

The key towards using calls to action successfully with your email marketing software is to ask yourself this important question: What, in particular, do I want my reader to do next? Once you have the answer to that question, you can begin formatting the perfect call to action for your email marketing campaign that will assist in achieving your objective.

Remember that you won’t become the ultimate email marketing guru over night, but with the right email marketing software and some careful planning about the calls to action you want to include, you will be able to quickly boost your results.

This demo shows how you can use the portable, wireless Sterizon wiZit handheld device for in-store, at the store-front, customer email opt-in for your MailChimp Email Marketing account. Sterizon offers in-storeemail collection device for store-front businesses like Restaurant, Spa, Salon, Retail, Hotel, Motel, Nightclub, Pub, Bar, Healthcare, Eye Care, Cosmetic Surgery, Therapy, Chruch, Automotive, Dealerships, Golf etc Sterizon wiZit integrates out of the box with major email service providers like Constant Contact, iContact, Vertical Response, MailChimp, AWeber, Campaign Monitor etc. Go paperless by replacing your comment cards, opt-in sheet, Sign Up Enrollment Cards, Email Registration mail-in cards etc. Please visit: www.sterizon.com

Email marketing is becoming extremely popular but this does not mean all business owners know how to run an effective email marketing campaign. However, those who are well versed in the subject of email marketing and have experiencing using popular strategies effectively are likely to gain a huge advantage over their competitors who do not have these skills. This article will provide useful information for business owners who are hoping to improve their sales or website traffic through effective email marketing. There are four strategies we will discuss here:

1. If you do not have a great deal of information about email marketing and do not deeply understand the principles involved one of the best ways to orchestrate a truly effective email marketing campaign is to hire a consulting firm with a proven track record in promoting business through email marketing to assist you in your endeavor. Similarly to traditional marketing using medias such as radio, television and print media, the popular strategies governing email marketing are changing constantly. As a business owner you likely already have enough to deal with trying to stay up to date on business practices that you do not have the time, energy or finances to also stay up to date on the latest changes in email marketing.

2. For this reason it is certainly worthwhile to hire a professional in the email marketing industry who can devote himself full time to keeping up to date with the most effective email marketing strategies and designing an email marketing campaign for our business to help you achieve your business related goals. However, selecting a consultant from the many options available can be downright overwhelming. In general you should look for a consultant who has a great deal of experience, a proven track record, listens to your questions carefully, explains concepts simply and makes your project a priority.

3. Another popular strategy for email marketing is to offer an email correspondence course on a subject closely related to your website or the products or services you offer. These correspondence courses should include a number of short segments, provide useful information, be of interest to your intended audience and should also help to promote your business in some way. The simplest way to promote your business without having your correspondence course deemed to be spam is to use a soft sell approach to subtly urge readers to make a purchase or visit your website for more information.

4. Publishing and distributing period e-newsletters is another example of an email marketing strategy which can be highly effective. An e-newsletter is very similar to a newsletter which is printed and distributed by conventional methods such as mail delivery. The bulk of an e-newsletter should be quality content in the form of featured articles, short articles containing useful tips or product reviews. The e-newsletter may also contain graphical elements. These elements may simply be graphic designs or they may be graphics which also serve as links. The links may direct traffic to your website or to other websites. Finally, your e-newsletters should contain some type of soft sell sales approach. It is important to not make the sales pitch blatant as this may result in the e-newsletter being considered spam. Finally, the e-newsletter should contain a call to action urging the readers to either make a purchase or visit your website for more information.

Regardless of the method of email marketing you opt to utilize, one of the most important strategies is to evaluate the effectiveness of your email marketing on a regular basis. This is critical because elements of your email marketing campaign which are not working should be weeded out. Likewise elements of your marketing campaign which are enjoying a high degree of success should be utilized more often. For example if you notice there is a spike in sales or website traffic each time you issue an e-newsletter, it might be worthwhile to begin issuing e-newsletters more often. This type of evaluation and feedback can turn a moderate success into a huge success.

Autoresponder Services Improve Your Profits by J. Stephen Pope

Perhaps you, like me, have web hosting that includes, free of
any extra charge, unlimited autoresponders. That being the case,
you might be inclined to balk at any suggestion to start paying
for them.

Recently, however, I made the switch to paying a monthly fee for
unlimited autoresponders. Am I rich (with money to burn)? Have I
lost my mind?

Actually, I consider this move to paid autoresponders to be a
wise decision. Here are some reasons why you might want to pay
for an autoresponder service.

1. Sequential Autoresponders: Although many web hosts offer
unlimited autoresponders, each autoresponder is only capable of
sending one response. Building business relationships with paid
autoresponder services can thus increase your sales.

2. Tracking Capabilities: The autoresponders that come with your
web host don’t have built-in tracking capabilities. Tracking
customer response with paid autoresponder services can lead to
more effective advertising campaigns.

3. Deliverability: A very large number of your newsletter
subscribers are not getting your newsletter if it is sent using
your web host’s mailing list program. Improving newsletter
delivery with paid autoresponder services will improve your
bottom line.

4. Legal Protection: Since the e-mails you send are hosted on
the autoresponder service’s servers, you are insulated from
false accusations of sending spam (unsolicited commercial
e-mail). Protect yourself legally with paid autoresponder
services.

You could also consider buying an autoresponder program (or
script) that will allow you to run unlimited, sequential
autoresponders from your websites. However, they can be
expensive, require some technical skill, and still have some
disadvantages.

For example, since you are hosting your own autoresponders, you
might still have issues with deliverability and legal protection.

Paid autoresponder services, with their many advantages over
other autoresponder systems, can increase your business profits.

RESOURCE BOX:

J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., has been
helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over
twenty-five years.

For profitable Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visit

http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/

To see how autoresponder services can improve your profits,
visit http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/autoresponders.html