You wrote a great article, the article touched a nerve with the reader, the reader then followed the link in your author bio to your blog, your latest posts connected with the reader and they couldn’t resist the free offer you put together so they enter their name and are now are a subscriber. Brilliant, so what do you do next? You send them email upon email of sales offers and promotions. As a result the user simply says no thanks, hits the unsubscribe button and another business opportunity goes awry. This would be the exact opposite of an effective email marketing campaign! How do you prevent this from happening?
Stop selling all the time and embrace effective email marketing techniques. Simple guidelines so that your audience does not become bored and frustrated at the mere sight of your name sitting at the top of their inbox. In fact it does the exact opposite. Your email address arouses interest, the subscriber breaks out into a smile, opens and devours the content that you send and follows your call to action.
That is of course the ideal world and that doesn’t always happen however there are things that you can do to give yourself the best chance of winning the support of your audience. To do that, you need to follow the tips outlined below.
Effective Email Marketing Tips You Must Follow
- Confirm lead generation sign up – Increase your readability by getting your audience to confirm that they have subscribed to your email list. Once they have done this you then have the guarantee that you will not end up in the junk email bin. It also sets a precedent to the subscriber that you are a serious business and your emails should be treated as such.
- Everybody loves something Free- Send free information that is related to the topic that your subscriber showed an interest in. Providing information on how a user can improve a certain aspect of their life or business can help build your influence and authority. In turn this means that the subscriber is also more likely to open emails as the expectation is that you can provide value.
- Send to a blog post – Use your email to send the subscriber to your latest blog post. This is a great way to increase your small online business influence and also get the user to learn more about you and your brand and increase the trust that they have for you. Don’t feel the need to take them to a sales page every time.
- Use Video – A simple video in your email or a clickable image leading to a video is a great way to alternate the tempo and feel of an email. Some people get bored with text all the time. Break it up and give them a video to watch. If video is part of your small business marketing strategy, it could be one you have produced yourself or it could be something that you found useful. This gives the reader an insight into you and what you like and helps create a personal connection.
- Personal relationship building information. The person at the other end of your marketing is a human being, so connect with them as a human. Give them an insight into your personal life. Share with your audience things that make you tick, what you like and what you don’t like. I am not talking war and peace, just a few little anecdotes now and again to reassure the reader that you are a human and not a robot. People buy from people after all.
- Personal opinion and comments – If you want to be an authority in your niche then you need to have an opinion. If there is a big news story about your audience write a quick email about it and give your opinion. The likelihood is that your reader will know about the story and value your opinion.
- Interaction – If you have 30 minutes down time then send a quick email out letting people know that your phone is switched on for the next 30 minutes and you are open to questions. It may work, it may not, but by drawing people to you and by enticing conversation you are attempting to build a relationship.
- Send out a survey – There are tools that you can use such as Surveymonkey that allow you to compose a questionnaire. Send out a questionnaire asking them questions about what information they would like to be shared. What topics do they want to know more about? Not only does it give you more chance to connect and build a relationship the answers might give you a great insight to the content that you create.
- Go for the sale. Mention the product or service, the price and what they need to do to get it. This is about business after all.
There is no limit to the type of emails that you can send to your subscribers and if you aspire to running an effective email marketing campaign that produces results then you want to be using all of these and more.
Go to town with your email marketing. Small business email marketing is not a sideline; it is still a core communication method. So think about building the relationship with your customers and how you can use email to cover the whole relationship.
The more you are willing to encompass this range of options the more effective your email marketing will be and the better the response you will get from your customers.
Maybe one should look at another marketing opportunity and that is the emails we all send every day. I represent a company that has developed a solution for just those emails and thus this post.
The basic idea behind WRAPmail is to utilize the facts that almost everyone have websites (corporate and/or social network site) and also send emails every day. These emails can become complete market-ing tools and help promote, brand, sell and cross-sell in addition to drive traffic to the website and conduct research. WRAPmail is available for free (with 3rd party ads) or for a small license fee at http://www.wrapmail.com.
WRAPmail also helps search for missing children with every email sent by incorporating an optional RSS feed from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children
James,
Love that you mentioned video with email as a great communicator! We, at BombBomb, love it and are passionate about making it easier for people to communicate through video email. We think video communicates much more than text can, showing someone your product or service instead of just telling them.
To add, make sure you, as a business, are making more email communication “deposits” than you are “withdrawals.” No one wants to read emails about an organization always asking to buy/click/donate,. Engage with customers, surprise them with the unexpected, then ask something from them every so often.
Well said, James.
Sean Mitchell
@seanmmitchell
http://www.bombbomb.com