When a business owner puts their focus into expanding their Internet presence, it is always important to make efforts to communicate with consumers regularly. One of the best ways to do this is through email marketing. These tips can get you started in your email marketing.
Minimize traditional email marketing activities during the holidays. Customers are preoccupied with family and friends, and are less likely to be paying attention to business email. Your odds of ending up in the spam box are considerably higher, which could have longer term implications for your bottom line. The major exception to this would be a business directly related to the holiday activities. Otherwise, give yourself a break and enjoy some downtime yourself. Business will be back on track in a day or two.
Keep track of the subject lines on e-mails that get opened and those that do not. For a single email, split your mailing list in half randomly, with each half receiving messages that have different subjects. 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.
if you run out of ideas for your email marketing campaign, try allowing your customers to assist you. Do things like write down questions that you receive from customers. Then when you go to send the next email, you have a topic. Make sure to include the customer’s name for credit too.
Create emails that contain great content. Give people useful information and don’t just spend your time only trying to sell them things. Provide your subscribers with special articles that they might not can locate on your site. You can also send out limited offers and discounts. Avoid sending emails only when you want sales, and be sure to send emails on holidays.
Avoid using exclamation marks as crutches in your emails. If you want to express a sense of urgency or importance, use the structure of your sentence and the words you choose to to make that impact. Overusing this form of punctuation can turn potential customers off and make your message seem insincere.
You should send your emails as a plain text every once in a while instead of always sending them in HTML format. This gives things a more personal touch and helps the subscriber feel that you are trying to connect. Do not use it too much though because then you may be seen as being too unprofessional.
In addition to using email marketing, incorporate SMS marketing into your campaign. Have customers sign up for an SMS option and send them text messages when on the go. When these two methods are used together, you have a better chance of getting more customers to sign up for your product.
Playing with fonts is fun, and you may be tempted to spice up your emails with exotic fonts. Resist that temptation! Fonts may display differently, or even be replaced by defaults, on someone else’s computer. Even if an odd font does display correctly, there is no guarantee that your recipient will appreciate it the same way you do. To avoid any font-based mishaps, stick with fonts that are widespread, easy to read, and understated.
The emails you send out as part of your marketing campaign should start out with a welcoming, personalized tone. Include the name of the recipient in the subject line and the opening of the message. This will make your customers feel more receptive to your message and be more likely to patronize your business.
Be persistent. Studies show that it takes a minimum of 7 to 8 impressions before your advertisements will take effect on a potential customer, and it could take many more. You need to touch base with your customers at least once every few weeks, and assume they will not buy your product or even click your links for several iterations of messages.
Make sure you use Alt tags to your benefit when you add images to emails. The text in these tags will replace the images that fail to load, or are prevented from loading by the email client. Make sure that the tag description is relevant to the image it is replacing so your readers have a good idea as to the image’s purpose. Add them to your hyperlinks as well.
Have an exit strategy for customers that stop responding to your mailings. If a customer is no longer interested in the products you have to sell, they’re going to be irritated and even angered by continued contact. Determine a number of messages or a length of time that you’ll keep sending messages, then if the customer doesn’t respond, remove them from your mailing list.
Avoid using the character string “$$$” in your marketing messages. Many spam messages use this character string either in the subject line or body of their emails. If you use it, people and email servers may treat your emails as if they were spam, too. Your emails may end up ignored or even blocked.
Make use of pre-headers in your marketing emails. Certain email clients – the more advanced web-based ones in particular – display a short summary for each email in the inbox. This is the pre-header. It is easy to set up. Clients generate pre-headers from the first line of text in the message. Compose your emails accordingly!
Success in any business is determined by a well thought out and implemented plan of action. Email marketing is an important part of your general marketing strategy. Using what you’ve read here is a great way to build your email marketing campaign into a riotous success!
