Email marketing means more than just sending out mass emails to everyone who has ever bought something from your business. A properly conducted email marketing campaign can be complicated to put together, but if you know what you are doing, the rewards can be great. Read on to find out how to do so.
Do not send emails that were unsolicited. Messages sent to recipients who did not request them are at risk of being marked as spam. Your IP address could be blacklisted if there are complaints of spam and it could also give your business a bad rap.
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.
To make sure your emails don’t turn people off, always seek permission before sending them out. Include a subscription button on your site, and encourage regular customers to have their friends sign up as well. If you’d like to give people some extra encouragement to subscribe, you could feature subscriber only deals.
Send out emails that correspond to your target audience. Once you have a few readers, think of ways to encourage them to sign their friends up. Always include some sort of subscribe link in the body of your email. This will make it easier for your readers to refer the link along to other people. This will cause your base to grow organically.
Treat each reader like a relationship. Ask in the first email for permission to send more. In the second email, tell them what discounts, products and services they can expect in future emails. In the third email and after, follow through with the content you promised to provide them with.
In order to banish all concerns about spam and ensure that no one on your subscriber list is there by mistake, consider employing a double opt-in strategy. Your first message should require some sort of additional action, like replying or clicking on a link, to make certain that the reader wants to receive further emails.
To get the most out of each email you send, try to focus each message on a single clear, concise message. Your readers should know what you are trying to say within the first few seconds of reading the message. Give them a call to action that is clear, and that they can easily respond to.
Your emails should be readable sans images. Many email providers disable images by default, and unless the user changes their settings, they will not be able to see any images you include. Because of this, any images you include in the emails that you send should also be followed by comprehensive text.
To ensure that your email marketing is really helping and not hindering your business, pay close attention to the spam that you once deleted from your own email account. See what kind of language you yourself respond most negatively to an alternately what kind of topics make you more likely to open a marketing email.
Each of your emails should be personally tailored to the recipient. You can do much more than merely using the recipient’s name in your message. You must mine the data you have on each subscriber for information you can use. Take your subscribers and group them together based on interests. Create emails that are tailored to their interests.
Don’t get yourself in trouble by not getting permission. This is spamming and you could be penalized for it as well as having all your mail refused, which could damage your business irrevocably. By getting permission to use email marketing, you will be creating positive relationships with customers who will keep coming back.
If you are going to incorporate graphics into your e-mails, you should make certain that the e-mails are still readable if the recipient chooses not to display those graphics. A great way to do this is to utilize ALT tags so that replacement text will be displayed when the images cannot be displayed. It might also be a good idea to place the bulk of your images near the bottom of the e-mail.
Running a great email marketing campaign can seem like a daunting prospect, but do not let your fears prevent you from getting started. As you have seen, it does not have to be a onerous chore. If you remember the advice you have read in the preceding article, you should be able to put together a highly effective campaign.