Great Email Marketing Strategy – Top 6 Steps For Business
Article by Tuula Olin
Email marketing has been labelled as the best performing marketing strategy of the century. It is also the most accessible marketing medium and has easily the best ROI because of its very low unit cost. Follow these 6 steps and your business will benefit from a great email marketing strategy:
1. Choose an email marketing provider
First thing a business needs to do when it gets serious about email marketing is to choose a suitable email marketing provider to manage and send the emails. There are plenty of excellent reputable email marketing services that will send the email campaigns, remove bouncing emails that dont get sent because of invalid addresses and even build up reports of the email campaigns.
2. Build your list of email addresses
Next thing to do is to start growing the email list. First you have to build an opt-in form that collects the emails of customers and prospects. Email marketing providers usually have easy to use form builders where you just add your own details and messages and the service builds the code for you to embed to your website.
There are two important things to remember with using the opt-in form:a) Give subscribers a valuable gift as a reward for giving their email address and name. It can be in a form of a coupon, store discount, free report, ebook or anything else that your customers find value in.b) Add the opt-in form on every single page on your website preferably on top of the page. Business Facebook Page is another important place for the form. Add the form also into business leaflets and ads
Writing an email marketing strategy is not an easy job. Even if you have written on various other email plans, writing a plan for a new strategy is as new as always. This is the most important step in any marketing strategy and should be given priority while planning an email marketing program.
Email marketing campaigns can become quite tedious and harassing if they are not catered to properly. Planning it well, is important. A proper marketing plan shall cover all aspects of the campaign including planning, creating, implementing and improvising existing strategies.
Many feel marketing via email is now a dead strategy. But this is not true. If it would have been dead you would not been receiving the millions of emails on promotion that are jamming your email boxes. What is most essential in this marketing strategy is to make sure that the email that is going out from your table is effective, attractive and error free.
Content and concept are important features of an email. It is the concept that makes your email interesting and it is the content that attracts users to your marketing campaign. Your email should be well drafted and self sufficient. It should read out the message loud and clear to your audience. Like it is essential to have a good concept for your email, it is equally important to have a good subject line for your email. The fate of your email marketing strategy will be judged from your subject line itself. If it is catchy enough to coax the user to open the mail, consider you task completed. But at times the quoted subject line is so boring that no one wishes to read further.
There is no foolproof plan for any strategy. Each and every strategy has evolved through the ages, and so has email marketing. There are no specifically categorized set patterns that outline this marketing strategy. It needs to be written and evolved with time and with experience.
Some guidelines that you can follow for effective email marketing include analyzing competitive strategy, studying the audience nature and background, setting quantitative goals for your marketing strategy and set a budget prior to beginning your project.
Naman Jain is an expert in Internet marketing, presently working with Rupiz Media, one of the leading internet marketing company, offering online marketing services, SEO services, pay per click and search engine marketing over the globe.
According to recent research, an email marketing strategy based on voluntary sign ups will lead to high conversion rates. Email marketing has come a long way over the years, and it has become something more than just a failed strategy for spammers. Just as long as the emails are sent out to potential leads that have shown interest in them, they can bring in a lot of success.
If you’ve been thinking about giving an email marketing strategy a try, you need to make sure you do it correctly. You can’t just spam to thousands or even millions of emails-you can get into a lot of trouble for that these days. It wouldn’t do you any good anyway, since it will just go to the spam filters rather than inbox.
Thanks to the invention of spam filters, though, the email marketing strategy is easier on the rest of us. Have a form on your website or blog for visitors to fill out so that they can request more information about your service or product. Send out regular emails to keep them updated. Make sure you give them the opportunity to opt-out anytime they wish.
However, if you make the emails very appealing and interesting, you won’t have to worry about anyone ever wanting to opt-out! Additionally, they may also tell all their friends about your business as well. Wouldn’t it defeat the purpose of having an email marketing strategy if subscribers end up unsubscribing?
If you want your email marketing strategy to work, then there are a few things you need to know.
Presentation. The formatting and graphics need to be visually appealing. Your email marketing strategy won’t work at all if you send your members sloppy, hard to read emails. Also keep in mind that a lot of email providers are blocking out graphics in messages. You should therefore give your readers an option to sign up for text or html versions of your emails.
Content. Give your subscribers something interesting to read. Tell them something that you think they would want to know. Since they voluntarily signed up for your email list, they must already have some interest. Make the subject line very catchy as well.
Discounts, coupons, and freebies. Everyone loves good deals and freebies. One of the most surefire ways to get an email marketing strategy to work is to offer subscribers special deals. It won’t hurt to offer your readers a little discount or freebie. Let them know that you’ll only be offering the special to them. Hopefully, they’ll enjoy the freebie or sample and will come back for more.
Try to get to know your readers. Provide surveys for them to fill out and offer prizes upon completion. Encourage them to leave comments and to give feedback. You can still remain professional while getting to know your potential customers a little bit. An email marketing strategy shouldn’t always be “strictly business”.
You can win at the game of email marketing strategies by following these tips. You don’t have to remain in the dark forever when it comes to email marketing. Even if you’ve tried in the past and failed, try these tips and start over again. A good email marketing strategy will bring a lot of leads and even sales. This has been proven time and time again, and you can bring your business plenty of success by sending your subscribers well put together, informative, and fun emails!
Matt Henderson, owner of MyOnlineSuccess.com, is an affiliate internet marketing coach. As an affiliate marketing guide for beginners, let Matt show you the same system he uses to make money with affiliate programs when you visit http://www.myonlinesuccess.com.
GraphicMail offers email and mobile marketing for small businesses, non-profit organizations, resellers, corporates and white labels alike. Find out more! Video Rating: 0 / 5