Marketing is an important part of every successful company; the key to success is the way it is done. One of the best ways to market a business is through email marketing. The following hints and tips can help you develop an effective email marketing plan that will enhance the success of your entire marketing campaign.
Stick to one subject per message and don’t meander. Customers will be quickly overwhelmed if you are trying to cover too much material in one email. Develop one message, keep it reasonably short and to the point. Your customers will be happy that they’re not being bombarded with too much information.
Only send emails to those who have requested them. Otherwise, you risk being known as a spammer. They’ll consider your email spam, defeating your marketing strategy. They will just send your email to their spam folder, and it will be a huge waste of your time.
Try using A/B testing on your subject lines. Send half of your messages with one subject, and half with the other. This way, you can see which kinds of wording are successful at garnering a response and which kinds of wording fail to do so.
Determine a schedule for sending your emails, and stick to the schedule as much as possible. Newsletters should be distributed the same weekday each week, around the same time. Your customers will know when they will get email from you and will, therefore, be able to look for it.
Occasionally mix up your format for a more personal touch. If you always send out emails formatted in HTML, throw in a text only message to get your readers’ attention. When written with care, these can charm customers because the design is straightforward and personal and can appeal to their emotions.
You should give visitors many chances to sign up without having them feel as if they are being pressured to do it. Remind customers that their information won’t be sold, and why they should be on your email list. Your email marketing success is directly dependent on your being able to acquire basic contact information from customers.
Creating brand recognition should be considered when developing your marketing emails. For this reason, you should be careful to develop a well-designed template for your marketing materials. Make sure to include your company logo, with color complimentary backgrounds, and professional fonts that are an accurate reflection of your brand. This will enable your customers to quickly recognize the source of the email.
To get your customers excited about receiving emails, give away special discounts and offer limited promotions through your newsletters. This will tell your customers that they are special, you care about their business and that you want to reward them for staying loyal by signing up for your opt-in list. This will even nudge them towards letting their friends see the emails through forwarding. Additionally, having a referral rewards program will help you grow your customer and email base.
Be sure that your emails have more information than a simple sales pitch. Send out a useful newsletter with information that will interest your customers. If you only make a sales effort, you may have unhappy customers that unsubscribe from your emails. While you may be using the newsletter to sell, your customers need more than pitches to stay interested.
You should always ask permission to add an address to your list. You may be considered a spammer if you don’t have prior permission. In addition to making you appear untrustworthy, unsolicited email messages can land you on an ISP’s blocked sender list.
Freebies are great tools to boost customer relationships, and they could be considered a part of your email marketing campaign. Include a statement in the email urging them to take advantage of your offer. Make your offer for a limited time or for a limited number of customers to increase the chances that your client will act quickly.
Sending an email to your list more than once every seven days is a bad idea. Most of your customers probably receive multiple emails each day, and are too busy to constantly open message after message. If you send out more than one email per week, you will see that your customers will delete or not read them.
If your company already has a strong brand identity, be sure to leverage that brand identity in your email marketing campaign. Your logo and color scheme should be consistently used in all of your emails. Once your brand has gained a favorable reputation and people already trust it, your emails will benefit from its good name.
Include in every email calls to action. Don’t leave anyone guessing about how you want them to respond. Tell them clearly. If you include links in your messages, clearly instruct your readers on how to use them, and make the links prominent and obvious. Consider including your call to action at both the bottom and top of your email for ease of use.
You should try and make your email messages as personal as possible. By making the email seem personalized, and less like a form letter, the recipient is less likely to ignore it. Putting in their name is simple, but take it one step further. You should be able to tell when, why and where they signed up. Make use of those facts when you draft your messages.
Make your emails personal to help attract consumers. As in many businesses, people like a personal touch. They will do business with a person they feel friendly toward. Use your customer’s names in the emails that you send them, and thank them in a personal way. This will give them the impression that your business cares and can go a long way toward increasing sales.
A smart email marketing campaign makes it easy to achieve success. Creating an email list of your loyal customers is a great way to interact with them, give them special offers and build an even better relationship with them. Apply the tips outlined above to all email marketing plans, and soon you will be seeing a rise in your income.