How Email Marketing Can Grow Your Business
Running a business today involves a number of components that never existed in the past. While business owners have a much greater reach to find their consumer, they also face a great deal more competition. The businesses that are the most successful are able to think outside the box and take advantage of tools that can help to grow their business. Email marketing campaigns are one of those tools. When used correctly this can be a powerful way to grow your business.
Email marketing starts by offering the visitor something for free. It might be an e-book, a report, a monthly newsletter, or anything else thatís of value. The visitor fills out your subscription form and then begins to receive the material from your email marketing campaign.
The tricky part is in offering something that is going to get the visitor to part with their personal information including their email address and thatís why your offer has to be of value. Todayís online users is much more savvy than in the past.
Over time the goal is to grow your subscribers. Now you have access to all of these email addresses and you might be tempted to begin sending out all kinds of content in an effort to get a sale. Word of warning ñ there are laws about spamming so make sure you familiar with these. In addition, even if you arenít actually spamming you must be careful not to annoy your subscriber, because they will simply unsubscribe.
Your subscriber signs up for a particular thing and you need to respect that. You however can always offer them various options so that they can add to their subscription or change their subscription at any time. Itís a great idea to initially create groups so that those signing up are getting exactly what interests them.
For example, you might create 10 groups that include health, fitness, consumer affairs, finances, etc. Then the subscriber can choose which categories they want to receive information from. You will also be offering what it is you have for sale that fits the subscribers category or group.
Email marketing has been one of the most successful platforms for online advertising and you too can enjoy the benefits and growth from using such a tool. The goal is to grow your business and your income and each one of these subscribers is a potential cash machine. When you market right youíll get the sale, so get busy!
Emails You Need to Use
If you are running online email marketing campaigns, chances are you are already using the popular newsletter format, which usually are sent out monthly or every couple of weeks. The trouble is far too many of us stop right there and donít use any other type of email campaign, and thatís a big mistake! Letís look at 4 types of email, other than newsletters, that you can use to connect with your subscribers.
#1 Informational Emails
Informational emails are not very long and generally, they do not require any action by the subscriber. They are simply there to convey a message and provide information to the recipient. Examples of informational emails include ëhappy birthdayí messages, course ending reminders, or webinar reminders.
#2 Educational Emails
Educational emails are very popular with recipients because they help to solve some type of problem or answer a question. You can send educational emails any time you have new content, a popular blog post, or any other educational information that matches your subscribers. This becomes even easier if you took the time to group your subscribers, because that way you can send the right content to the right people.
#3 Lead Nurturing Emails
This type of email is one of the least used or when it is used it is often used wrongly. It takes a lot of time and effort to take a lead and move them through the entire sales cycle. By using lead nurturing emails, you able to help that process occur faster and you donít need to invest a lot of time. You can set up various nurturing campaigns with 7 or 8 nurturing emails in each and then you can simply schedule them to execute over a period of time. Both 60 and 90 days are popular depending on what your product or service is. These should be short messages that are packed with content rich information and that try to get the lead to respond to your call to action that will lead them to your website.
#4 Promotional Emails
This type of email, if not done right, can find you with a subscriber that will unsubscribe or simply trashing your message. Too many promotional emails and you will annoy your recipient. The only time you should use this is if you have a new product or service, a special deal going on, or a special event coming up. You should not use this more than a couple of times a month.
What types of emails do you use in your email marketing campaigns? Now you have some new ideas so why not give them a try.
How to Get Your Email Marketing Read
Itís one thing to put together your email marketing campaign, but itís quite another to get it read. Letís look at some things you can do to improve the readability of your email marketing campaign and keep people engaged.
Horizontal Viewports
Your email message needs to be designed to have a horizontal viewport. Most designers know this, but whatís not as well known is how small most viewports are. The normal size of the preview pane is approx. 638×86 pixels, according to recently released information by MicroMass Communications. What this means is that the first 100 pixels of your email wonít be seen in the majority of cases. With the shift moving towards mobile devices, that viewing area is getting smaller not larger. So make sure you make the most of this very small space. It is the only place you get the opportunity to convince your reader to read your entire message.
Email Clients Are Unforgiving
Web browsers are pretty forgiving of messy HTML or flawed code. However, email clients are not at all this way. CSS will be frowned on. Images that are undefined will be tossed somewhere, and messy HTML will be rejected not corrected. You must define the height and width of all the images you embed. You must use Title and Alt tags, and you must make your links absolute. Donít do fancy unless you are sure it will work.
The Writing Rules of the Game
Use few images and many words. Yes images are certainly eye catching but they slow down the load time, and this is important to many users especially those that donít have hi-speed internet or who are using mobile devices. Rely on text to its job. Super copy will load fast, fits into tiny spaces, and gets your message across.
Avoid the Use of CSS Whenever Possible
Email clients and CSS donít get along all that well, so it is best to avoid if you can. Even with major email, clients there are compatibility issues, which doesnít make a lot of sense in this day and age but it will eventually improve. However, there are times when CSS is necessary for your email design. If thatís the case, then you need to make sure that all of the properties remain inline and are not in shorthand.
Keeping these tips in mind when designing your email will improve the likelihood that your email will be read and that makes your email marketing campaign effective.