People are spending more time online and checking their email more often than ever, so e-mail marketing has increased in importance. If you are considering creating an e-mail marketing plan, apply all the tips laid out here to get you started.
Target your audience. Encourage your subscribers to invite their friends to join your list too. Remember to have a subscribe link inside your email; hopefully, your customers will pass it to their friends that have similar interests on the products that you offer. This method will have your list of email subscribers growing exponentially.
Design your email around a single specific message. It is important that your audience does not grow bored or bogged down by an excessive amount of facts within a single message. Compose a single message, keeping it fairly short and concise. In the end, your customers will be thankful for being given the information in a concise and organized manner.
Don’t bombard customers with a message that says “Buy Now!” Don’t constantly send out emails that urge your subscribers to buy something. This is a very repeatitive way to go about things and you may be considered a spammer and lose a lot of customers. They are aware that you want to increase sales, so it would be best if you built a solid, professional relationship with them before encouraging them to buy anything. They will appreciate this a great deal and will be more likely to purchase from you.
You can use A/B testing to improve the results of your emails’ subject lines. Pick one email then send one half of them with one subject line and the other half of them with a different subject line. This is a great way to measure the effectiveness of each subject line, helping you to understand how to send out emails that get read.
Ask permission before sending emails to customers. People consider emails that they didn’t sign up for as spam so they generally just throw these messages away and don’t bother reading them. Sending out bulk, unsolicited email to customers may also violate your ISP’s terms of service.
In general, do not send important marketing email on or around major holidays. Your customers will be at home enjoying their day, so it’s unlikely they’ll be interested in reading your email. Of course, there are always exceptions. For example, emails advertising a holiday sale or a Black Friday campaign will attract attention at almost any time.
If you want your marketing emails to be effective, give your customers lots of options. Allow your customers a choice of exactly what they receive from you and how often they receive it; also, don’t demand that they disclose a lot of information. The more control they have over the process, the more comfortable they will be.
Email marketing should have the branding of your business. That is why you must take time to build a great template that includes all of your sites primary features. This will foster instant recognition among your readers.
There is no excuse for not getting permission, before sending emails to customers. If you don’t, your clients may trust you less and hurt your company’s name. In addition, you could find yourself blacklisted by an ISP, which can be catastrophic for your business.
You must be persistent where it counts. Make sure to stay persistent with the correct people or it will be a waste of time. If your messages are not properly targeted, your customer base cannot grow.
When you create an email promoting customer base list, make sure that your customer has a clear choice to be on the list. Otherwise, people may consider you a spammer and delete your emails or unsubscribe from your list. Your email host can even drop your service if enough people complain about your email spam.
In the middle of the opt-in process, you should ask for at least the first names of your customers, if not their first and last names. If you have a name for each customer, you can send a personalized newsletter with the customer’s name. If your messages address readers by name, they are going to feel more individual than anonymous, which makes your messages stand above the fray of bulk email.
Given the abundance of knowledge presented in this article, check in with yourself to make sure you remember all that you have read. You should either read this article again or print it out, so that you can use it as a reference in the future.