If you ignore your customers, they will keep returning and continue to be happy, paying customers for as long as they live.
Doesn’t make much sense does it? But this is happening every day in countless small businesses across the nation.
Most business owners don’t pay much attention to their customers if they aren’t already in their store. After all, how is the business owner suppose to keep in contact, and build a relationship with his/her customers when they aren’t in the store.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to build a relationship with your customers and prospects with . . . → Read More: Keep Your Customers Happy and Returning
Email marketing is essentially the same as direct mail except that instead of sending mail through the postal service, messages are sent via email.
The other main difference between email marketing and direct marketing is that email marketing is permission based. You do not send any email to any one without their permission.
Permission is gained when some one signs up to your newsletter, or asks for additional information from your website. Or when they give you their email address in person. Anything else is considered spam.
Basically there are three steps to email marketing.
1. Building your list of customers with their email addresses. . . . → Read More: What is Email Marketing?
Stay connected.
Personalized emails speak to an individual, not a group. Customers don’t want to be one of a group, they want to be special. And an educated, appreciated, incentivized individual feels a more personal connection with your business.
Returning customers.
If you offer a recurring service, and can remind them when necessary to return, they will appreciate that, and return. If you keep track of that, instead of relying on them to do so, that’s one less thing for them to worry about.
Customer loyalty.
These days more people than ever shop for value. If you continually provide value to your customers with your product . . . → Read More: What You Gain With Email Marketing
The concept of email marketing is easy to understand. A business can send out emails, (to people how have given their permission to receive emails), informing its clients or customers of current events with the business, special offers, information on related products or services, continuing education about products already purchased, or anything else the business would like it’s customers to know about.
But is email marketing right for your particular business? Here are some items to think about when considering whether or not email marketing is a good fit for your business.
Would you like to have repeated contacts with your customer/client base?
Email . . . → Read More: Is Email Marketing Right For Your Business
There are many ways a business can make use of email marketing. Here are several.
Newsletters
A monthly email newsletter is a very good way to keep in contact with your clients, and to educate them about your different services. This is a great way to build relationships with your clients.
Website opt-in
This is when you insert a little ‘opt-in’ form on your website, where you ask people to signup for your newsletter. Often you can provide an incentive for signing up, like a coupon or another type of freebie.
This is how you can get your email marketing or other email communications to people . . . → Read More: How to Use Email Marketing
So, you want to stay in touch with your customers. You might be thinking about a newsletter. That’s a good idea. But what’s the best way to deliver that newsletter to your customers?
How about a physical newsletter? How about email?
Comparing an email newsletter to a physical newsletter we see:
• Its virtually instant.
• No printing costs, and no printing delays
• No delivery (postage) costs.
• No delay between conception, production, and distribution.
Email newsletters provide fresh information and content on a regular basis that is easy fro your clients to access. People who subscribe to your newsletter only need to check their email, something . . . → Read More: Email Newsletters
According to a recent study by Experian Marketing Services 80% of emails to customers and prospects which contained coupons received higher open rates and transactions rates than emails without coupons. This is a significant advantage, one that should be exploited.
Most households still get their coupons from newspapers, however, the internet is fast becoming a growing coupon resource. In fact in the last three years coupons distributed online has increased 46 percent.
What does this mean for your email marketing efforts? That’s easy – include coupons in the email.
This is quite easy to do. Just use your favorite graphics . . . → Read More: Email Marketing With Coupons
So you’ve decided to jump into email marketing. Very good, its one of the best performing marketing methods there is. In fact its so good that the Direct Marketing Association claims that for every dollar spent on email marketing, a business can expect a return of $57. That’s not a bad return.
One of the first things you need to think about is who you are going to send those emails to. In other words, where and how to you get a list of people to send emails to?
Here, we will discuss your options, both the bad and the good.
Email lists: buy, . . . → Read More: Acquiring Your List
There can be fine line between legitimate email marketing and spam. And it is a very bad idea to cross over that line. Once crossed you will alienate both your existing and potential customers. And you will never be able to cross back.
Legally and ethically any advertising email you send from your business to someone without their expressed permission is spam. It is just that simple.
For more detailed information about what is legally considered spam you should consult “The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003”. There are six basic requirements in order to comply with the Can-Spam law:
1. Don’t use false or misleading . . . → Read More: What is Spam?
Responsible, and effective email marketing is based on the idea of permission.
Basically, you need to have the email address owner’s permission before you can send them any marketing emails. If you don’t have this permission, the email recipient will most likely consider the message as spam.
You do not want to send spam, or even be perceived as sending spam.
If you are accused of sending spam, then you may find your email accounts closed down, your website shut off, and your reputation ruined. In some parts of the world, you may even be breaking the law.
Aside from these practical considerations, there is . . . → Read More: Permission Based Email Marketing
In order to run a successful email marketing campaign there are three measurement, or metrics that need to be monitored, the open rate, the click through rate, and the bounce rate. By keeping track of these metrics you can consistently improve your results over time. So let’s take a look at these items separately.
The Open Rate.
If you send out 100 emails, how many get opened? This number is your open rate. Of course, the higher the rate the better. A high open rate signifies that your email recipients consider your emails valuable, and/or you have created attractive subject lines that compel . . . → Read More: Email Marketing Metrics
First let’s define an ‘email blast’.
Here’s my definition: “Its a marketing email sent all at once to a large quantity of recipients whom have not given the sender of the blast permission to contact them.” I might also add, “This is commonly considered spam by most of the recipients.”
Lets take a look at a scenario. You want to market something. You buy, or rent a list of emails addresses from a list broker. You find a rare email service provider that will let you use rented lists. You blast out 10,000 emails to everyone on the list.
What will likely happen is . . . → Read More: Why Email Blasts Are a Bad Idea
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